ACORNS
Not too many people even realize acorns are edible any more. In the last twenty years or so, I've only seen a couple people out collecting them, who weren't members of my family. One was an elderly Vietnamese refugee, and the other was Mexican. I guess that, as flour became cheap enough for anyone to buy at the market, fewer and fewer people wanted to go the the bother of collecting them and processing them.
That may change. A loaf of bread is fast approaching a five-dollar bill these days, and flour sure ain't as cheap as it used to be, either.
With that being said, making them edible is indeed a chore. A couple species of white oak are edible as is or after being roasted, but most have to be leached of the tannins which give them a bitter taste. Tannin is water soluble, but it's still a chore.
First, of course, they have to be shelled. First, dump them into bucket of water. Keep the ones that sink, and discard the floaters. Then dry them by either putting them out in the sun for a few days (keeping an eye out for squirrels, who will steal them if given the chance), or dry them in an oven preheated to 150 degrees for about 15 or twenty minutes. Don't overdo it, you don't want to cook them yet. Use a nutcracker to shell them until they are all shelled, or until you are no longer amused. Two gallons of acorns will give you roughly a gallon of shelled meat.
There are two ways to leach the tannins. If you are going to use the acorns for flour, use method #1. If you are going to roast them or use them for snacks, #2 is fine.
1. Grind them in a lot of water to a fine meal, and soak them for days or weeks (depending on how much tannin the acorns have) in cold water, changing the water at least twice a day. You will know when they're done when the bitterness is gone, and the water remains clear. This is actually the preferred way, because the acorns will retain their oil and will be more nutritious.
Dry them again in the sun or in a 150 degree preheated oven, and you will have a very good flour that won't break apart when cooked. Store them carefully so that the oil doesn't go rancid.
Acorn oil is selling for about $200 a gallon right now. Unfortunately, i don't know how to recover the oil when boiling them. If you know how, please tell me.
2. Follow these instructions carefully. If you do it wring, you will actually fix the tannins to the acorn meal - which you definitely don't want to do.
You will need two pots. Put the acorns into one pot of boiling (not cold) water, and start heating the second pot of water. When the water in the first pot darkens, pour off the water and dump the acorns into the second pot of boiling water. Do not put the acorns into cold water and heat the water. Always put the acorns into boiling water until the water remains clear.
To make bread, most people mix one part acorn meal to one part wheat flour. here's one recipe:
Acorn Bread
2 cups acorn flour
2 cups cattail or white flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup maple syrup or sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons olive
Bake in pan for 30 minutes or until done at 400 degrees.
Onward and upward,
airforce
