For as long as I can remember I have been told that acorns are horribly bitter, that American Indians would boil them in multiple changes of water to remove the tannins before grinding them into flour or whatever they did with them.
Today I learned that is simply not true.
I have a very large white oak in my front yard that is producing acorns for the first time since we lived here. I picked up an acorn and just squeezed it between my fingers and the husk cracked right off, easier than cracking a peanut. I peeled off the “skin” for lack of a better term and was left with a lovely cream-colored nut.
Since I am of a scientific bend, I decided to see just how dreadfully bitter these things were and took just a tiny nibble, it was not bitter at all! It was actually quite tasty, a little like a cross between a filbert and a brazil nut. I bet they would be even better roasted.
So there you have it, go out and try an acorn, you might be surprised.
Well I’ll be damned. I thought acorns were poisonous to humans. I have no idea who told me that, but I believed it till this day. I just googled it (“trust but verify”, and all that), and I see that lots of people eat them. My horizon has been broadened.
Different species of oak have different levels of tannins in the acorns. There are also different levels in individuals. Good for you for having a good tasting acorn sorce right in your own yard.
They are - but fatality generally occurs 24 hours after ingestion - most often while sleeping as lying prone allows the toxins to flow to the brain. So my suggestion, August West, is don’t go to sleep for the next week or so - just as a precaution.
Has it been a particularly bountiful year for acorns? I have a front yard full of them. A few weeks back I would hear them hit the roof and bounce down and once one of them even hit me in the head as I was walking in from the car.
Apparently, yes, the acorns of some ‘white’ oaks are quite edible raw and fresh, or roasted like chestnuts. It’s the ‘red’ oak acorns that can’t be eaten without preparation.
I read somewhere that an easy way to leach acorns is to grind them up and put them in something like a pantyhose and leave it in your toilet tank for a couple of days. Assuming you don’t have a bleach thing.
I used to grind up acorns while at camp and leave it out for the squirrels. The last few years I went there never were enough acorns.
Koreans have an acorn jelly dish that I think is delicious. It has a very subtle flavor, and it took me a while to “get” it, but after I did it became one of my favorite side-dishes.
I have a bunch of oak trees don’t know which kind in the front of my house. My kids like to pelt each other with nuts while waiting for the daily neighborhood ride to school.
He was, until that other squirrel figured out the faster way of grinding them up, putting them in pantyhose and leaving it in his toilet tank. Squirrels are all about instant gratification. And pantyhose.
It’s funny that the acorn is not more widely eaten. You would even think that someone would have gone to the effort of breeding an improved variety of oak, with less tannin. It’s strange to think we’re surrounded with food sources that we never touch, for no good reason.
Breeding oak trees has never been very practical, because they take too long to mature. You cross tree A with tree B, and then wait twenty to fifty years to get acorns. And if the acorns do turn out to be good, you’ll still have trouble because oaks are very difficult to propagate from cuttings.