# How Are Sunflower Seeds Taken Out of the Shell?
Sunflower seed kernels make nutritious snacks, and they are available dry roasted and salted but tough hulls have to be removed prior to eating them. Jeff Cox from Organic Gardening mentioned that Diana Branch, 1979 staff editor at the time, worked out a home method to dehull sunflower seeds using a small common table top mill for grinding grain. Commercial applications employ the use of impact mills.
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Machinery
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Sunflowers produce nutritious kernels with hulls that need to be removed before eating. A motor-driven grain mill that can be placed on the kitchen countertop is perfect for dehulling. It has stone plates inside, and Diana Branch discovered that setting the plates 1/8 inch apart produced perfectly shelled sunflower kernels. Commercial dehullers are designed to handle bushels full of sunflower seeds in short periods of time.
Home Method
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Sunflower seeds enter the mill and are pressed between two rotating stone plates that crack the shell down its seam, which releases the kernel.
Commercial Method
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The high speeds of commercial hullers throw a hull against a plate, causing it to separate into two pieces to release the kernel. The uncleaned hulls and seeds are separated by vibration through screens of varying sized mesh.
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Growing Sunflowers
- The Culture of a Sunflower
- How to Separate Sunflower Kernels
- What Kind of Sunflower Seeds Are Used to Grow the Sunflower Greens?
- Are Sunflower Seeds Good for the Intestines?
- The History of Sunflower Seeds
- How Sunflower Seeds Are Taken From Sunflowers
- How to Prepare Sunflower Seeds
- How to Harvest & Dry Out Sunflower Seeds
- How to Harvest the Stiff Sunflower
- How to Grow the Sunflower Seed Plant
- How Are Sunflower Seeds Dispersed?
- How to Harvest Sunflower Seeds
