Acorn Cookery

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by this thread.

Last fall we had a bumper crop of acorns from the oaks in the back yard - a mix of red, white, bur, and a few indeterminate oaks. Since I had to rake them all up several times anyway, due to badly dinged lawnmower blades, I decided to find out how to extract something edible from them.

I put in a few hours of work spread over a couple of weeks, and produced a big Tupperware bowl of acorn meal, ruining an electric coffee grinder in the process. The final product was fairly coarse - more so than commercial corn meal - and has a distinctive (to me) mouth feel and flavor. It’s slightly nutty-tasting, mildly sweet, with a faint bitter overtone, sort of like you get with walnuts. I don’t know if this is inherent to acorn meal or whether I didn’t get all of the tannins out; at any rate I find it to be a pleasant flavor. There is no gluten in acorns so the meal can’t be used for bread without adding wheat flour; although it can be used for frybread.

I found a number of recipes for baked goods that use acorn meal, typically as an additive or substitute for a portion of the wheat flour in ‘normal’ recipes. I’ve made Indian pudding (good), acorn muffins (dry), and added it to turkey stuffing (very good but not really noticible). My favorite by far has been acorn pancakes, with a 1:1:1 ratio of acorn meal, corn meal, and wheat flour. This makes a dense pancake with a distinctive nutty flavor.

At any rate, I used up the last of the meal a few weeks ago. Come this fall I’m going to increase production, having learned from some of my mistakes last year. Now that I’ve acquired the taste, I want my pancakes year-round!

Has anyone else had any experience with acorn cookery? Do you have recipes to share? Questions on making your own acorn meal? I’m also open to suggestions as to how to convert a bunch of acorns to meal; my plan for the fall was to use an old-fashioned hand coffee grinder instead of the chintzy electric grinder that I destroyed.

2

Holy cow. I didn’t even know you could eat acorns. Then again, I never saw an Oak tree until I was an adult - they don’t grow where I grew.

3

I used them in Survival class and in the Boy Scouts to thicken stews. Note that once in a great while you’ll find an acorn that isn’t bitter and tannic, and can be used without leaching.

Some tribes of Calif indians subsisted heavily on acorns.

4

White oak acorns can typically be used without leaching the tannins. Red oak, not so much. Incidentally, for the “indeterminate” ones, a simple test can determine if the tree they came from was a white or red oak: look at the leaf. If it has a bristle or bristles (aristae) at the end(s) of the leaf or lobes, it is a red oak. If not, white. All oaks, whether or not they’re named “red oak” or “white oak,” fall into one or the other of theses supergroups. Black oak (Quercus velutina,) for instance, is a red oak.

As for their culinary uses, I loooooove to use them as a breading for fish, chicken, and vegetables. Bread them, then fry or bake them, with a little butter and lemon juice. Heaven. Similar to walnut or pecan, but “wilder” tasting.

5

Correction: also leach white oak acorns (so that’s why mine are a little bitter!), but not for as long as red oak acorns.