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basilic85
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Accorns
#27055681 - 11/24/20 03:10 PM (3 years, 2 months ago) |
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Hello, is anyone cooking acorns from oak trees here and if so, how do you prepare them. Do you have any books or documents on the subject to recommend to me? Thank you
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pugster
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ive read a few accounts of people trying them, general consensus is that unless you are starving to death they are not worth the bother as they need to be leeched multiple times to make them edible (as well as shelled which takes ages). chestnuts are out now and are far better
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GreenHorns
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I commonly read about acorns being used by natives at random nature centers and such. Maybe look up native American indigenous recipes for inspiration. Or grind it to a flour and supplement some in with your standard flour in a bread recipe you enjoy.
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undersativaskies
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If you really wanna cook with them here's one way to use them. The person above was right about leaching the tannins out. A cool trick i learned was to fill a pillow case up with some. Then find a fast moving clean stream and take some heavy rocks and fasten the pillow case in the stream under some rocks. The moving water will leach everything out in a few days. Then clean and grind them up to make flour. It'll do the trick.
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dizzy_simmons
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Some acorns are better than others. Nuts from white oaks tend to me MUCH less bitter than those of red oaks, but most of the First Nation’s millennia-long selection for edibility was destroyed along with 90% of their people & culture.
Soaking them in moving water (such as a creek) for several days is a must for most acorns, or multiple changes of still water. Taste them for bitterness - they can be eaten raw - you’ll know if they’re not ready.
You can coat them in oil, salt, & roast to eat plain/add to cookies or whatever like other nuts. You can also grind them up to make flour (mixed with wheat flour to whatever taste/consistency you want) to make almost anything. I once mixed some 50:50 and made an awesome, hearty pizza crust. Acorns lack gluten tho, so the flour doesn’t “rise”.
Ignore the “acorns are famine food” remarks (raw wheat is also disgusting FYI), but if you’re looking for *easy* nuts stick to white oak acorns, beech nuts, and chestnuts. I think it was Zach Elfers (?) who went the extra mile and made beechnutbutter. After all, they’re nuts, you can use them anyway you would use other nuts.
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Cyonic
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Acorns are great. I eat them.
I have about 40lbs of acorns right now tht I need to process.
Last year I had tanoak acorns.
Shelled them and put them in a five gallon bucket filled with water, emptied bucket every 24-48 hours for a couple of weeks. The paper comes off easy when soaked in water, literally brushes off
Added them to soup which was fantastic. They ad a nice soft crunch to a bite of soup.
Bitterness varies from species to species and from tree to tree.
Discovering this I realized that native women in the world days probably picked from specific trees known for their sweetness. .
The more bitter they are, the better they will preserve so the good ones go bad soon after dropping.
I found a white oak tree this year with nuts that taste as good as almonds without leaching. Each oak nut from that tree is about 6 times the size of an almond. If I were there a couple of weeks earlier I could have harvested 100lbs in the time it took me to harvest 20pbs which was no time at all.
I think oaknutbutter with salt would be a good use for them, or pancake mix, or biscuits. They would make a fine bread if mixed with wheat for gluten to make the bread streatchy and able to rise
I even munch on a few bitter ones here and there because when I do I get some sort of rush of feeling much better than usual.vthat makes me think they contain something or some thinks know and unknown that my body really needs that it's not getting from store bought food. No surprise there.
If they are shelled, skinned (first) then ground into flour the rrinsing process would be faster, but you'd have to peel the skin off each nutnl which would be tedious although there is likely a better method that I'm not aware of.
I know someone whose mom soaks the whole nuts without even shelling them, but she says it takes months for the tannins to rinse that way.
You can boil the nuts and pour that off to really quicken the process.
To do this you need two pots. You boil the nuts in one pot when le bring ngingcwater to a boil in the next.
When you pour out the water from the nut pot you need to make sure that you replace that water with boiling hot water. If you replace it with un boiled water it will lock the tannins in forever.
The downside to boiling is that the starch is realeased by the heat.
Also it is more labor intensive than emptying a bucket every two days. All that takes is a little effort and patients.
Anyone who says acorns aren't worth it didn't do it right.
They are full of vitamins, minerals,protiens and things that, imo are good for your health but yet to be discovered. Best thing in the world for your microbiome.
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Sleepingstar
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Re: Accorns [Re: Cyonic]
#27144942 - 01/13/21 01:26 AM (3 years, 15 days ago) |
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Would the skin detach easier if you steamed or blanched them?
Oh, I see that you soaked them earlier to make it come off ~
Edited by Sleepingstar (01/13/21 01:28 AM)
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Cyonic
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Quote:
Sleepingstar said: Would the skin detach easier if you steamed or blanched them?
Oh, I see that you soaked them earlier to make it come off ~
From what I gather about boiling them to get the tannins out, and that fact that once you do that you vant let them cool down again until the tannins are out or they will lock in forever I do not think steaming them would be a good ideA
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Ovoidhunter
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Re: Accorns [Re: Cyonic]
#27145679 - 01/13/21 11:17 AM (3 years, 15 days ago) |
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Acorns are bitter as hell.
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basilic85
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Thanks i will try next yeat i have some oak in my land.
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Sleepingstar
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The younger ones aren’t if I understood correctly what I read in a previous post. Is there a cooking method to make them less bitter?
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Cyonic
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Quote:
Sleepingstar said: The younger ones aren’t if I understood correctly what I read in a previous post. Is there a cooking method to make them less bitter?
The reason they are bitter is they contain bitter tannic acid. The acids are water soluble so they can be rinsed out.
The traditional methods were probably all variations of grinding acorns into flour, and then Puttingbthe flour into a basket that would then be placed in running water such as a stream for a couple-few days after which they would probably spread them out on a blanket or animal hide to dry.
So now a days you could use a basket, or pillow case.
You can also put acorns in a bucket of water, and exchange the water every 1+ days.
The fastest method is to boil them in water and exchange that water a few times. If you use this method you can ruin your nuts if you're not careful.
If you boil the acorns, and I hen dump in he water, the water that you add back for the next rinse needs to be boiling or almost boiling at the moment it's added to the acorns pot.
Example: if you bring the acorns to a boil and while doing that you have a second pot of water that your heating up at the same time you will have hot water to replace the boiled water with. Of you switch the water put with that hot water and continue that process your good and will have acorns to eat on that day.
However, If you boil acorns, then dump that water and exchange it with cold, or room temp water the cold which will cause the bitter acids to lock into the acorns meat forever. It will not matter of you bring that water to a boil; it will never pull the acids put of it went from boiling to cold.
So if you do that method, have at least two pots, one that you are boiled ng acorns then n, and another that you are boiling water to replace the acorn water with.
The down side of the fast method is that it will boil out the star h along with the tannic acids.
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Sleepingstar
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Re: Accorns [Re: Cyonic]
#27167941 - 01/24/21 08:11 PM (3 years, 3 days ago) |
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Do they have a lot of oils in them?
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