Acorns

Acorns were an important food source for the Native Americans before the Europeans influenced their culture to the degree that the Native Americans no longer desired or needed to harvest and use acorns.   As you will see by reading my blog in the future, I am interested in foraging and in native plants and their uses.  Naturally, using acorns was on my "to do" list this fall.  I remember eating acorn biscuits as a kid but I don't remember any of the gathering or processing.  I do remember that the biscuits were edible but had a strong bitter taste to them.   We most likely processed the acorns incorrectly.

There are many different species of Oak trees here in the Northeast.   Most notably are the white and red species of which there are many variations including the lovely and interesting Burr Oak and Chestnut Oak.   White Oak acorns have less tannin in them making them sweeter but they are also significantly smaller in most cases, making them more difficult to process.  For my acorn meal I used Red Oak as they are abundant on the farm and quite large making shelling an easier process.

I gathered a large bag of the acorns relative quickly and in the rain.   While I was gathering them I disturbed 2 Grouse.  They sat about 15 feet away from me for a good 15-20 minutes and only moved when I got withing 8-10 feet of them.   I never would have known they were there had I not gotten too close.   Smart!

Shelling the acorns is a tedious task, but enjoyable none the less.   After shelling them they must be leeched.  Leeching is the process of removing unwanted substances from something, in this case, tannin.  This can be done by boiling the acorns in many changes of water until the meat becomes sweet.  The Native Americans used several different techniques for removing tannins.  They did boil the nuts but added ashes (lye) which binds to the tannin and speeds up the leeching process.  Lye is caustic and dangerous externally but if ingested it is neutralized by your body so there is no danger of being poisoned by this method.  The other most interesting method of removing the tannins is to put the shelled nuts in a twined bag or net and put them into a moving stream for a few days.   I wish that I had a clean running stream to try this in as it seems simple and I wonder at it's effectiveness.

Many relatively modern resources suggest grinding the nuts before leeching and then using a cold leeching process which involves soaking the ground nuts in cold water for a period of time and then drying the resulting tannin-free meal or flour.

I boiled my acorns for about 4 hours, changing the water out every 1/2 hour or so.   They eventually lost their bitter taste and developed a nutty and very unique flavor.   I then dried them in the oven at about 150 deg. F for several hours.  The result of this was some hard, very edible acorn quarters.  As the acorns cook they become dark brown.

Grinding them once they are leeched and dried can prove to be a difficult task.  I tried several methods with the help of my grandparents who have about every tool imaginable.  The flour grinder could not grind nuts, the kitchen aid was not strong enough, the nut grinder didn't stand a chance!   Finally my grandmother's "Magic Bullet" did the job but I burned out the motor.    Hmmm.... I have yet to try a coffee grinder but I suspect that that will be the best tool for the job.   I would also like to try grinding them with a large rock mortar & pestle but have not yet found the time to travel to said rock.

The resulting meal/flour is somewhat coarse but very palatable.   It is a lovely color.   I made acorn cakes with the meal by mixing one egg, 1/4 cornmeal and 3/4 acorn meal with a little maple sugar and cooking them in butter over an open fire.  The result was some very good, though crumbly, cakes.  What I loved most about them is that they satisfy your stomach and need for food in a remarkable way.   When you are exerting a lot of energy and especially in cold conditions the food you eat really effects how you feel and how much energy you have.  The acorns were an excellent food for a cold day of hard work.   They were also quite tasty and I would be extremely happy to have a pile of acorn meal on a week-long adventure in the woods.  

 

Acorns deliver high levels of fat along with protein and carbohydrates.  They are full of vitamins and have particularly high levels of Folate and Vitamin B6.  They also contain many minerals and are abundant in Potassium, Manganese, Magnesium and Copper.