Survival Skills: Acorn Processing

In yesterday’s post, we looked at acorns as a primal super food. Now, let’s look at the process to make them edible to humans.

The two most commonly taught ways to prepare acorns in modern books and classes are to process them by leaching in boiling water and by leaching in running water (or changes of water). However, the boiling water seems to cause some level of bitterness to remain in the acorn - no matter how long it is boiled. So I recommend the following techniques of leaching in warm or cold water.

STEP 1  Gather the acorns. Picking them by hand is the old school way, especially with a very large, flat basket in front of you so that you can pick nuts with both hands. With more speedy and contemporary tools, they are easily raked or shoveled up on flat surfaces. In short grass, they can be scooped up very well with “bedding fork”, which is like a pitch fork with two dozen tines (the tool is for scooping animal manure out of sawdust). One other way is to lay out large tarps under the trees. Shake the branches with long poles, or just wait a few days. Then collect the acorns by picking the tarp up and rolling them into a pile.

STEP 2  Shell the acorns. Any attached caps should be removed immediately from freshly fallen nuts because worm larva may be under there trying to burrow into the otherwise good nut. A few days may make the difference between a good acorn and a wormy one. However, if you are freezing nuts in your freezer as soon as you pick them, you could leave the caps on. Once the caps (if any) are gone, then crack the nut’s thin shell and remove the nut meat. These nut meat halves and crumbles can move to the next step now, or be dried and stored as is, or frozen for future use. You could also roast the acorns inside their shells to give them a different flavor and make some species a little easier to shell out.

STEP 3  Preform a taste test. Once the nuts are shelled, chew up a piece for a taste test. If it is not too bitter, you probably have a White Oak group acorn which could be ground into flour as is, once it dries up a little bit. However, if the nut meat is somewhat bitter or very bitter - it will need to be leeched in water to improve the flavor and make it safer for consumption. Leeching is accomplished by soaking the nut meats in changes of warm, cool or cold water for several, minutes - hours - or days until their taste becomes acceptable. If you use potable water, you can taste the acorn raw. If you have to soak them in a stream, then cook the acorn meat somehow before tasting so you don’t get sick from contaminated water. You could use potable running water by letting the sink trickle on a colander of acorns, but this will waste a lot of water.

STEP 4  When the nut meat is leeched of enough tannic acid to become palatable, it is ready to be made into flour. Dry the nut meat until you are able to grind it without a paste forming. If a paste seems to form, them stop until you have dried the acorns more. They can be ground into “meal” between two rocks, or in a flour grinder, or even in some blenders and food processors. The resulting flour or meal can be used immediately, frozen for future use, or THOROUGHLY dried and stored in an air permeable cloth bag or wood vessel in a very dry location. Inspect weekly for mold or bugs. Never eat any moldy acorn products. Freezing is the best storage method for acorn flour.

Written by Tim MacWelch First draft published in his book The Hunting and Gathering Survival Manual