How to Crack a Macadamia Nut, and When to Skip the Shell
By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.
To crack a macadamia, work with the seam. Every shell has a faint line running around it. Sit the nut with the seam facing up, hold it steady, and tap the seam squarely with a hammer. It opens along the line. An ordinary nutcracker will not do it, which is why most macadamias are sold already shelled and why nut-in-shell packs come with a key.
How to crack a macadamia nut
The shell is round, hard and smooth, which defeats the two things a nutcracker relies on: grip and leverage. Squeeze one and it rolls out sideways. Both ways past that work with the seam rather than against it.
A hammer, aimed properly. Rest the nut seam up on something that will not mark, hold it still with your fingertips well clear, and give the seam one firm tap rather than several nervous ones. The shell parts along the line and the kernel comes out whole. Hit anywhere else and you crush the kernel with the shell, which is the usual reason people decide macadamias are not worth the trouble.
A key, if the pack came with one. Nutworks cuts a slit across the centre of each shell before packing. You push the key into the slit, twist it like a screwdriver, and the shell splits into two halves with the kernel loose inside. It takes a couple of seconds and no aim at all. The Easy Cracks packs include two keys, so a table can crack in pairs rather than passing one key around.
Which lines are live, and what is on them
All of it sits on one page: the Nutworks range. Ten lines are live, seven of them 75g pouches of flavoured kernels and three of them 200g packs of nuts still in their shells. Nutworks makes more flavours than that, and the ones we range move with the season, so treat that page as the honest answer to what exists today rather than a list of everything the brand has ever produced. A flavour you remember buying is more often resting than gone.
The nuts are Australian grown and processed on site at the Nutworks factory, which matters more with macadamias than with most nuts. Macadamias are high in oil, and oil is the thing that goes stale. A nut roasted and packed close to where it was grown reaches you tasting of macadamia rather than of the cupboard it sat in.
Nuts are light and they travel well, which is why we keep them in the snacking range beside the crackers, chips and popcorn rather than off on their own.
Pick the format before you pick the flavour
The range splits into two formats that do genuinely different jobs, and choosing the wrong one is the usual way this purchase disappoints.
The 75g pouch is roasted kernels with a coating on them, resealable, and roughly the amount two people finish over a drink without noticing. It is the format for a snack, a hamper, a stocking or a desk drawer. Seven flavours are live in it.
The 200g nut-in-shell pack is the whole nut with its shell on, slit across the middle, with a small key included in the bag. You push the key into the cut, twist, and the shell comes apart in two halves. Three lines come this way, including the Easy Cracks vanilla nut-in-shell macadamias, whose kernels are bathed in vanilla before they are dry roasted inside the shell.
Cracking takes a few seconds a nut, which sounds like a fault and is the whole point. A bowl of these slows a table down, gives people something to do with their hands and lasts an afternoon instead of four minutes. That is why they move for us in December rather than in July: they behave like a centrepiece that happens to be edible. The pouches are what you buy when you simply want to eat nuts.
The ten lines, and what each one is for
Flavoured nuts usually promise more than they deliver. These mostly do what the name says, so the useful question is not which is best, it is which suits the job you have for it. The 75g pouches sit under $9, the 200g nut-in-shell packs at $13.90.
| Flavour | What it tastes like | Where it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Manuka Honey (75g) | Dry roasted kernels hand-coated in Australian manuka honey. Sweet, but a long way short of a lolly. | The one to buy first. Reads as a treat, so it is the safest gift in the range. |
| Roast Salt (75g) | Roasted and lightly dusted with rock salt. Nothing else going on. | The default. Buy it when the nuts are going into a bowl at a party. |
| Oven Roast (75g) | Roasted, without the salt dusting. Creamy and mild, the nut itself. | For anyone who finds seasoned nuts too busy, and for salads and baking. |
| Rosemary & Sea Salt (75g) | Herbal and savoury, with the rosemary kept well short of medicinal. | The cheese board pick. Sits under hard cheese and cured meat instead of fighting it. |
| Wasabi (75g) | Hand-dusted in wasabi seasoning. Heat that arrives in the nose and leaves quickly. | Beer, gin and grazing tables that need one surprise on them. |
| Salted Chilli (75g) | A fine chilli and rock salt powder. Salty first, warm afterwards. | The savoury answer to wasabi for people who want the heat to stay in their mouth. |
| Finger Lime & Jalapeno (75g) | Citrus zest and green chilli. Sharp, bright and distinctly Australian. | A special edition, so buy it when you see it. Very good with a soft cheese. |
| Easy Cracks Vanilla (200g, in shell) | Kernels bathed in vanilla, then dry roasted inside the shell. | The table pack. Two keys in the bag, so two people can crack at once. |
| Roast Salt Nut in Shell (200g) | Dry roasted and salted inside the shell. | The Christmas one. Put it out at 11am and it is still going at three. |
| Oven Roasted Nut in Shell (200g) | Dry roasted in the shell, the same cracking trick without the vanilla. | Camping and picnics. The empty shells burn well in a fire afterwards. |
If you are only buying one
Buy the manuka honey. It is the flavour people come back for, and it is the least risky gift in the range because sweet coatings on nuts normally go wrong by turning into candy. This one stops at a thin honey glaze, so it still eats like a nut rather than a confection. If you are buying for somebody whose taste you genuinely do not know, that is the pouch.
Buy the rosemary and sea salt instead if the nuts have a job to do on a board. Sweet nuts argue with cheese; herbal savoury ones sit quietly underneath it. If you are putting a cheese board together, that is the one to add, with the finger lime and jalapeno alongside it if you can get hold of it.
New arrivals, and the flavours that come back.
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The two that divide a room
Wasabi and salted chilli are the flavours people either open twice or push down the table. Wasabi is the more polite of the pair: the heat goes up the nose and is gone within a second or two. Salted chilli stays in the mouth and builds. Neither is a good idea as somebody's only pouch, and both are very good as the third bowl on a grazing table where everything else is mild. If you are buying for an office, assume at least one person will not touch them.
One more note, since these so often end up in gifts. Macadamias are a tree nut and a serious allergen for some people. If a pouch is going into a shared office kitchen or a group hamper, it is worth asking first. Small question, saves an awkward morning.
On the table, not in a bowl
Put the nut-in-shell pack out with two bowls, one for whole nuts and one for shells, or the shells end up on the arm of the couch. Hand the keys to whoever is nearest the table and let them run it. If a key goes missing mid-afternoon, the slit is wide enough that a small flat screwdriver does the same job, though a standard nutcracker will not: a macadamia shell is one of the hardest in the business, which is exactly why the pack comes with a key rather than instructions.
Decant the pouches. A 75g pouch looks like almost nothing on a grazing board and generous in a small bowl, and it reseals, so put half out and keep the rest for the second lap. Once a pouch is open, finish it inside a fortnight. Oily nuts go flat long before they go off, and flat is the disappointing stage.
Ordering, posting and Christmas timing
Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched from Corio that day, tracked, Australia-wide. That is dispatch, not delivery: how long the parcel then takes depends on where it is going. Shipping is free once an order passes $100, so most people building a gift box add nuts to a larger order rather than posting a single pouch.
Nuts are one of the better things to post in an Australian December. They do not melt, they do not need a cold pack, and they survive a hot letterbox in a way chocolate does not, which is why they end up in so many Christmas hampers and on so many grazing tables. Australia Post confirms its December cutoff dates in October. Until then, treat mid-December as the practical limit for capital-city delivery and give yourself an extra week for anything crossing the country or heading somewhere remote.
Questions we get about Nutworks macadamias
Can you crack a macadamia without a nutcracker?
Yes, and most of the time you will have to. A standard nutcracker is built for walnuts and almonds, and it has neither the grip nor the leverage for a macadamia: the shell is round, so squeezing it just rolls it out of the jaws. A hammer against the seam works. So does a lever cracker made for macadamias. The nut-in-shell packs get around the problem entirely by cutting a slit in the shell at the factory and putting a key in the bag.
Does Woolworths sell Nutworks macadamias?
Supermarket ranging changes by store and by season, so we will not tell you what is on a shelf near you this week. What we can say is that the flavoured pouches are the ones people most often tell us they cannot find in person, which is usually what brings them to us. The range page here lists only what is in stock, so it is the quickest way to confirm a flavour exists before you go looking for it.
Which Nutworks macadamia flavour is best?
Manuka honey is the one that leaves fastest here and the safest gift, because it is sweet without turning into candy. Rosemary and sea salt is the better choice for a cheese board, roast salt is the one to put in a bowl at a party, and wasabi or salted chilli belong on a grazing table where the rest of the food is mild. If you are buying blind, honey.
How do you crack macadamias in the shell?
With the key in the pack. Nutworks cuts a slit across the centre of each shell; you push the key into the slit, twist it like a screwdriver, and the shell splits into two halves with the kernel loose inside. It takes a couple of seconds. The Easy Cracks packs include two keys, so a table can crack in pairs rather than passing one key around.
Start with the Nutworks range, pick the format first and the flavour second, and add a second pouch for whoever asks what you are eating.