From Acorns to Acorn Flour

First off, I'm no expert, but I thought some might be interested in this topic. And just to be clear; you gather, process and eat any wild edible at your own risk, and the safest thing to do would be to find a qualified expert and get their instruction.

As part of a barter deal with another forum member, I've recently been gathering acorns. While I have an enormous pin oak in my yard, it's of the red oak family rather than the preferred white oak variety, with its reduced tannins. Luckily, my sister and brother in law live close, and have two large white oaks, and there is a bur oak (also in the white oak family) up the road. A rule of thumb is that the white oaks have rounded leaf tips, while red oaks have pointed tips (thanks Iz!). I've posted this pic before, but here's an illustration of a white oak leaf:


I tossed those with cracks, or with dark spots, or looked weird. The easiest way I found to remove the hulls was just to cut the acorn in two with a knife and pop the kernels out. Your mileage may vary, and kids - get help and supervision from your folks before doing any of this.



Next - removing the tannin. These acorns were pretty sweet at the start, but I boiled the kernels, pouring off the tea colored water and replacing it about four times, tasting between boils. The bitterness was essentially gone by the third change of water, but I ran it through the process once more. Pieces of the outer skin of the kernels would float off when I changed the water - I don't think they really hurt anything, but I suspect they were higher in tannin than the regular meat of the nut. Again, YMMV in regard to the number and length of the boils, just keep tasting until you like the result. I then used a cheap electric food chopper ($10 at Walmart) to rough chop the nuts, and put them in my dehydrator to dry out. I'm sure you could use your oven at the lowest setting, or even put them out in the sun, but I wanted to reduce the moisture before grinding. Some instructions I saw at other places suggest chopping or grinding the acorns prior to the boil, then straining through a cloth and repeating until the bitter taste is gone. Either way, it's an essential step; I've read that tannin is a poison and it certainly is unappetizing. Get rid of the stuff.

 

After they were dry and resembled small, hard pieces of butterscotch chips, I ran them through my grain grinder to make a fine flour. You might be able to use a coffee grinder, or even go old school and grind them with a couple rocks, but I already have a mill and it took just seconds to produce the flour.

My plan is to substitute the flour for whole wheat flour in recipes. I didn't measure, but I guess I hulled between one and two pounds of acorns to produce about two cups of flour. That's just a guess. It's not a hard process, but you will invest some time and energy. And don't think you have to have a grain mill or dehydrator to do this, but they certainly saved me some time. Hope this was interesting and somewhat informative.

 

Looks pretty good. You can also cold process to remove the tannin (basically lots of cold water soaks instead of boiling).

Acorn "flour" has no gluten so if you replace whole wheat flour 1:1 you will end up with a much denser baked product. That might be ok, depending on what you're making. You can add vital wheat gluten or decrease the proportion of acorn flour to get a lighter texture.

I'm headed to one of the nearby parks to see if the acorns there are producing.

 

Ray Mears put his ground acorns in a mosquito net and suspended that in a creek for a day or two to wash the tannins out.

 

Great looking acorn flour. Archeological digs in this area revealed extenstive pits of roasted acorn hulls. So, we going to try roasting in the hull prior to leaching.

 

Nicely done Buddy

 

Yummy I wish I had oak trees up here.

 

Awesome. I have always wanted to do that. I started picking a bunch up last fall, but got sidetracked and never went through with it.

 

Thank you, very interesting!

 

Nice job.

 

Actually I'm looking for gluten free alternatives. My daughter is a Celiac (as well as Crohn's disease) Does anybody have any experience with the finished products made from acorn flour? Recipes? How well does the flour keep/store?

 

I wonder, if you can do this with Black Walnuts? I have 6 trees dropping them right now. I have a Corn Sheller that can double as a Walnut Huller. I think that this might be a nice protein twist for a Loaf of Bread...

 

You can add black walnut meats to baked goods if desired. They have a stronger flavor than the English walnut but there is no need to grind and leach. Also try hickory.

While I'm thinking about nuts, beach nuts are also great. The little triangular nuts will be dropping soon and you have to be fast to get them before the squirrels and turkeys.

 

A friend of mine named forny, he is a member now of bcusa has done this a few time I'll see if I can get him to post on this he has made pan cakes from acorns and was telling me some short cuts.

 

I have made a cake from acorn meal, but it also has wheat flour in it. It was heavier cake.....more like a carrot cake and very dark in color, but delicious even without frosting!

 

Thanks for posting, it's helpful to follow along the whole process. The other thing I'd like to try is some properly roasted "acorn coffee" too. I'll have to keep an eye out for a white oak and try collecting some acorns sometime.

 

Acorn flour pancakes
2 cups acorn flour
2 eggs
1 cup apple sauce(unsweetened)
1/2 canola or other vegetable oil
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
just enough buttermilk to make the batter smooth and pourable enough for good batter.
Shift dry ingredients together. Place liquid ingredients in your mixers bowl and whip them togther just until mixed then gradually add the dry ingredients with the mixer running until they are all in and a good smooth batter is your's. Cook like any other pancake.

 

My Dad has two big white oaks in his yard. I remember raking up the acorns as a kid and filling two or three 5 gallon buckets with them. Those things are vicious when the lawn mower picks them up. If we had slacked in our raking duties, Dad would know by the sound of machine gun fire as he mowed along the fence. Might see if I can set up some tarps in his yard and collect some. Figure if I use the tarp like a rain catch right into the bucket I won't have to rake so much. Hmm, if I get a decent harvest I might say so on here. Perhaps some bartering will be in order, especially for those who don't have too many oaks in their area. How much are acorns worth by the pound to my fellow bushcrafters?

 

We have a huge fruiting of white acorns right now. It seems the bugs are down too.

 

We are having a bumper crop of the white oak acorns this year. Down at my place the last two weekends, they are falling like rain. Just yesterday we picked up a coffee can full and used them for slingshot ammo. I will be picking up a bunch to try flour making. The coffee sounds interesting also.

Kevin

 

1/2 canola or other vegetable oil? 1/2 what; 1/2 cup or spoon?

 

Last winter as a survival type exercise I tried to leach out some Red Oak . What a royal pain . Also it's hard to tell the differance between White and Red in the winter unless you know your barks really well .
Doing a little anecdotal research I find the following .
White Oak acorn are more football or oblong I think . Red Oak acorns are big fat juicy looking jobs at least on my property .
When all else fails you can crack one open and take a bite . White Oak can almost be eaten as is . Red Oak will have you spitting out the acorn in no time . This can save you some time before you leach out those dang Reds about 15 times . Im not sure you ever get an edible product out of the red .
Oh by the way you can make a Black Walnut syrup similar to Maple syrup to flavor your bread . From one Walnut tree I got about 3 gallons of sap last Feb . and it was sweet . I never got around to boiling it down in time and it got moldy on me . The maple syrup was delicious but it takes a whack of firewood .