Yes, we're talking about acorns. Although acorns don't get the love that hazelnuts and walnuts enjoy, this wasn't always the case. Bill Logan is an arborist in New York, who traced the history of eating acorns for his book Oak: The Frame of Civilization. And it makes sense that the history of acorn-eating spans the globe. Because oak trees are almost everywhere: And then you go on out into China, and then out into Southeast Asia. But despite this wide geographic range and long culinary history, these days very few people eat acorns.
Beyond the occasional enthusiastic forager, widespread consumption is pretty much limited to Korean cuisine which favors an acorn jelly , and several Native American tribes. That's because while acorns do have a lot of good qualities — fats, protein and minerals — they also have some drawbacks, namely, tannins. He shows students how to shell, grind, process and leach acorns to get a subtly flavored flour. If you've ever tried a raw acorn, and quickly spat it out, that's probably due to tannins.
These compounds give raw acorns an astringent, puckery quality they can also do some damage to your kidneys as well. But, as people have learned throughout history, tannins can be removed. Students grind shelled acorns for a class on making acorn pudding led by John Kallas, in Portland, Ore. Luckily the tannins are water-soluble, so you can leach them out with a few changes of water.
Latest Content
Unfortunately, many acorns do taste bitter. This is because they contain tannin, a bitter substance in oaks which is used to tan leather. Real pucker power here. Some varieties of acorns contain more tannin than others.
They range from the Emory oak of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, which is so mild it can be used without processing, to some black oaks with very bitter acorns, requiring lengthy processing to render edible. Generally, the best acorns to harvest are those of the white oaks, such as the swamp oak, Oregon white oak, and burr oak, as they contain less bitter tannin. Luckily, nearly all acorns can be made usable with natural processing which renders them nutty and sweet. Acorns are one grain that literally grows on trees.
- The Acorn Harvest: Acorn Foraging and Recipes | Fresh Bites Daily.
- Reading the Islamic City: Discursive Practices and Legal Judgment (Toposophia: Sustainability, Dwelling, Design).
- De la paternité et des psychoses, une étude philosophique et psychanalytique. Tome 1, Du père (Psychanalyse et civilisations) (French Edition).
Even a small oak tree can produce a bushel or more of tasty, nutritious acorns. And that grandaddy oak out in the pasture could produce nearly a thousand pounds. Now that is a lot of eating from a small area. There are now several varieties of grafted oak trees, which bear nearly double the harvest of wild trees. These trees are available for purchase from specialty nursery companies.
The Day Acorns Became A Crop For Me
Not only are acorns great food for us, but for many birds and animals as well. Any deer hunter can tell you that one of the best spots to ambush a wily buck is on a trail to a big oak tree. Deer and wild turkeys harvest these nutritious acorns to fatten up for winter. Early settlers must have noticed this, as they soon began to turn their hogs out into the oak woods to fatten on the bounty of acorns.
Survival Skills: 5 Ways To Eat Acorns
I accidently had this happen to two of my own pigs. I had a litter of weaner pigs, six in number in an outside pen. While we were in town, a stray dog came by and had great fun, chasing the little porkers around the pen. None were injured, but two of them vaulted the pen wall next to the shed and took off for the woods as fast as their little legs would run. We hunted, called, and scoured the woods for days. By then, we figured a black bear, which were numerous in our woods, had a midnight snack of pork on the hoof.
Then one November, I was riding my horse down one of the wooded trails through huge old oaks, when I noticed turned-up fresh soil. I tied my horse and scouted further, discovering seemingly acres of ground dug up underneath those bounteous oak trees. My lost piggies were found. But those tracks looked pretty big. To make a long story short, we corralled those errant porkers and hauled them home.
On putting them in the pen next to their brothers and sisters, we were shocked. Out in the woods, they really looked big, but now they looked huge. They were a third again as big. On butchering, the woods raised hogs weighed pounds, while the grain fed hogs barely made dressed. But I credit much of their hearty size to those fat acorns they were gorging themselves upon. Not a bad natural feed. Get a little pocket tree book and try to identify the oaks you find. In many areas, there are several varieties of oaks available to the acorn harvester. Some are quite mild and sweet and others pretty darned bitter.
If you have a choice, try to find a variety with mild meat and only a little initial tang of tannin. You may have to simply nibble and check, come fall. Different varieties of oak have different shaped acorns. Crack a nice fat acorn with no worm hole. It should be yellowish, not black and dusty insects. Now, simply nibble and chew up a part of the nut. If it is very bitter, spit it out and try another kind of acorn. When you find a grove of relatively mild acorns, note this for next year and harvest away. As the understory is usually very thin below a decent sized oak tree, the acorns are quite easy to pick up.
Depending on the variety of oak, your acorns will drop between late September and October, more or less, depending on your climate zone. If you wait too long, the handy dandy squirrels and other wild critters will beat you to them, leaving only the worm-riddled hulls behind. With acorns, processing simply means making them ready to eat. When I get home with my bounteous haul, I spread them out a layer thick on an old sheet which I have laid on a roof, corner of the yard, or some other out-of-the-way dry, sunny place.
This lets them sun dry and prevents any possible molding before I get them shelled. It will also kill any insect eggs or larvae, which might be inside. If you cannot lay the acorns out in the sun, spread them in a single layer on cookie sheets in a very slow oven for an hour. Some acorns, such as those of the Emory oak, require no more processing than cracking them open and eating them. Stir to prevent scorching.
- We Are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements;
- How to Prepare and Cook Acorns.
- Harvesting the wild: Acorns!
- The Incredible, Edible Acorn — Arthur Haines.
- Die Schweiz ist anders: Kleines Land ganz groß – ein farbiges Mosaik von Macht und Millionen, von Alltag und Ängsten der Eidgenossen (German Edition).
However, most acorns do contain enough tannin to make leaching this bitter substance out necessary. To do this, simply sit down and crack a big bowlful of acorns, carefully examining each nut for black holes, which indicates a worm is inside rather than a wholesome plump yellowish-beige nut. Acorns are very easy to crack. The shell is pliable and quite thin.
Pop the cap off, then simply grasp it with a pair of pliers and give a squeeze. Simply crack the shell. Then peel it off and toss the kernel into a bowl. When all are done, get out your food grinder. You could crack them one by one with pliers or smash them individually with a rock, but the native folks of this land figured out a much better technique: Simply set out acorns on a hard flat surface and smash them all at once with a wide heavy object.
Use a sidewalk and a cinderblock in urban environments. Use two big flat rocks in your back yard or in the wild. Next, separate out all the shell fragments and place the nut meat pieces in pot of warm water. Soak them in warm water for a few hours, then pour off the water. Do a taste test. If the acorns are still too bitter, soak them in warm water for a few more hours. This water bath leaches out the tannic acid, which causes nausea and digestive distress when consumed.
Repeat this until they are palatable. For ideas on what to do with the leftover tannic acid, click here. You could also do a leaching process in moving water with a cloth bag.
Acorn - Wikipedia
Clean socks or pillow cases are great, if you have them. Tightly woven baskets are the traditional method of straining them. Once the acorns are properly leached, they can be dried a bit to grind into flour, or used while the chunks are still damp. Roasted Acorns One of the easiest ways to cook acorns is to roast them. Place the damp nut chunks on a baking sheet and sprinkle with fine salt.
Toast them for minutes at degrees in a pre-heated oven, or roll them around in a dry frying pan over the camp fire.