How to crack walnuts? I got a large batch of walnuts and started cracking them using a standard hinged lever nutcracker (ostkaka from IKEA). It is pretty messy and either the whole thing gets squashed to pieces and it's hard to pick out the nut pieces from shell pieces.
Or it can be split in two, but than the nut is still stuck in the shell and it's a long process to carefully get it out of there (even if I don't care to keep the nut intact)
Does it just take more practice or is there a technique or better tool to crack walnuts?
At my house we use a butter knife. At the bottom of a walnut, there's always a small crack that we can slip the tip of the knife through, then twist the knife by the handle and the shells come apart. The little separator in the shell can also be easily removed with the butter knife.
But other than that, we sometimes opt to simply grab two walnuts, and with our two hands, crush the shells against each others, and one of the two walnut shells will Crack and give way. Disclaimer: this method can get messy.