How to make acorn flour
Acorns are the nut of oak trees. The British isles has two main species of oak, the English oak and sessile oak. The vast majority of the oaks in Britain will be these two species. When it comes to collecting acorns for food, it doesn't really matter which of the two species you are collecting, they are both similarly high in tannin and the processing is the same. The species found in north America and in collections over here vary immensely in the both the amount and type of tannins they have, and can be made edible which much less processing. When riding back with my panniers full two weeks ago, rode past an American white oak in the local park, this although the acorns do contain tannins generally requires the least amount of leaching of all oaks.
We collected approximately 8 kgs of acorns. We aimed to be self sufficient at some time in the future, or at least be well prepared for eco/economic collapse of (un)civilisation. This made in the end 2kgs of dry acorn flour.
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So here is my method, and I make no apologies for having a pair of bare feet, I like my hippy feet. ☺
Stage 1. Collect acorns. Oaks do not fruit every year and only drop acorns copiously in their youth. If you cant find acorns in the middle of a mature wood, try the outer rims where the younger trees are. It is why I like foraging on the bicycle, I can cover large areas quickly, and riding over acorns is a pretty noticeable way of finding a tree with a good crop. It also works for finding hazelnuts. I collected 10 kgs of acorns from one tree, if this sounds like a lot, it barely made a dent on the amount of acorns lying under the tree.
The acorns then need to be sorted and the bug infested, and rotten ones removed. This is a simply carried out by putting the acorns in pot and lifting out the floaters.
At this stage I also pick out any sprouted acorns which are then transferred to a pot of soil to be planted out in the spring.
Stage 2 The husks need to loosened and the meat removed. Now this where things can start getting difficult. The meat of the acorn can naturally loosen away from husks in dry weather. In years where there has being a nice warm dry September I have simply shelled the fresh acorns. Different trees in different climates grow tighter nuts than others. If you have collected from English oaks, the cups will need to be removed as well, do this before soaking them water as the cups are very high a tannin and will cause you more work later on.
Stage 2a) After removing the cups, lay small amounts of acorns on a flat clean surface and gently tread on them, or roll and pin across them. You could also attempt bashing them in strong bowl with the end of a rolling pin. If you are lucky the acorns will break cleanly in half leaving with a husk and two bits of meat. Mine didn't do this, so I reverted to plan b.
Stage 2b) If your acorns are too tightly stuck in the husk, put them in a saucepan and pour boiling water over them and heat for no more than 10 minutes. You are aiming at blanching not cooking. With large quantities this becomes an art form. If you have starchy acorns and are cooked at this stage they will go powdery inside the husk. Wash the acorns under cold water once heated.
You now have about three days to remove the husks from the meat before the acorns start growing mould. I simply grabbed a handful and bashed them in a pestle and mortar.
Stage 3 Leeching is where you make the acorns paletable. The tannins are antinutritive, not really poisonous to us but they stop of guts absorbing nutrients like iron, and in large quantities slow the gut down, and can cause kidney problems. In animals like dogs and horses this can fatal, which were some people have the idea that acorns are poisonous. The raw nuts taste like a dry teabag, when they taste of nearly nothing they are leeched.
There are several ways of leeching the tannic and gallic acids out of the acorn meat. I wrapped my acorn meat in a tightly tied up old net curtain, but you can also use a pillow case. The most traditional, easiest and quickest is place the cloth bag in a clean stream with a stable water flow. The water flow shouldn't go to torrents or dry out during the period of leeching, it also needs to be free of rats. My last house I used go to the woods at the bottom of the garden where I had such a stream and tie the pillow case very tightly to a branch, and simple leave for a week or more. I have sinced moved and Llanelli has rat ridden streams prone to becoming raging torrents during rain.
Another simple method with smaller quantites is place the cloth bag with the acorns in it in the cistern of a toilet. I used this method when I lived in Stoke on Trent, which like Llanelli has no suitable streams. At the time I had two lovely big Victorian loos with large cisterns. Again like the stream method you need to leave it for a week or so. But alas this time, being a sucker for punishment I am doing 10 kgs of acorns and little plastic modern loo wouldn't flush if I put them in there.
The method I used this time was put the cloth bag in bucket and change the water at least once a day. This method of leeching is not as fast as the stream or the cistern, and it is certainly more work. I put the bucket next to the bath so I would remember to change the water, it also meant I could wash the bag of acorns under the shower as well as doing the water change. The whole process took about two weeks, before the acorns stopped tasting like a dry tea bag.
Stage 4. The acorns now need milling and drying. By this stage the combination of cooking some of the acorns instead of blanching and being too hard whacking them half my acorn meat was already powder. So emptied the leeching bag into my largest pot and milled by using the end of the rolling pin as pestle, in much the same way as African women pummel grain with the end of a dry log. At this point I took rehearsing some very difficult rhythms I am learning at drum group. An hour later I had the Uruguayan trance rhythm pretty much licked and pot of crude flour with bits in it. It is vital when processing wild food you find ways of not getting bored, good company, music, and practicing things like rhythms all help. This is why tribal societies process things like starches in groups, it make the whole thing not feel like work.
The crude lumpy flour was then transferred to dehydrator trays and dried overnight at 50c. The other times I have made acorn flour I haven't had a dehydrator, so I have dried in trays in an airing cupboard or in a very low oven for several hours. Halfway through drying you can pummel the flour a bit more, wait to the end. I always worry if the whole nuts get too dry they will become too hard to pound into flour.
When everything is dry , sieve, pound the bits and bag up the flour in air proof container.
Wow, da da .. da da deddedda da deedadad da da sorry after making acorn flour you need celebratory drum roll. It is not a lot of work, it is just project that took me three weeks complete, and two full evenings of pounding and dehusking first the fresh blanched acorns (this is normally quicker) and an evening pounding the dried leeched acorns in to flour.
Using the flour
The qualities of acorn flour depends heavily on what you have done during the processing. The more heat that the flour has being exposed to the less sticky and starchy it will be. Sometimes you have not much choice in how much hot water you expose your acorns to. This year batch the meat was really stuck to husk, which made the initial removal of the husks really hard work. I tried boiling about 2 kgs of acorns and it just resulted in the meat going to powde, and still not coming away from the husk. I am concerned that my final flour this year acts more like coconut flour, because of this over heating and will probably need mixing with other types of before using. Other years it has worked more like besan flour [chickpea/garbanzo bea], in that it binds to itself when wet. I can also mix it with plantian seeds or ground flax to increase stickiness.
Something I did notice is that when I tried to hang on the washing line in the rain to leach it, it started to partly ferment. It started to smell slightly like sourdough. Acorn flour can make bread, so I will try making sourdough with this years batch. I also might make fermented Asian flat breads called dosa with it. My breakfast this morning was acorn flat bread, it wasn't fermented or anything fancy, it was simply mixed with water to see if it fully leeched and has enough starches to bind. It kind of borderline on the binding front but it is fully leeched.
We collected approximately 8 kgs of acorns. We aimed to be self sufficient at some time in the future, or at least be well prepared for eco/economic collapse of (un)civilisation. This made in the end 2kgs of dry acorn flour.
So here is my method, and I make no apologies for having a pair of bare feet, I like my hippy feet. ☺
Stage 1. Collect acorns. Oaks do not fruit every year and only drop acorns copiously in their youth. If you cant find acorns in the middle of a mature wood, try the outer rims where the younger trees are. It is why I like foraging on the bicycle, I can cover large areas quickly, and riding over acorns is a pretty noticeable way of finding a tree with a good crop. It also works for finding hazelnuts. I collected 10 kgs of acorns from one tree, if this sounds like a lot, it barely made a dent on the amount of acorns lying under the tree.
The acorns then need to be sorted and the bug infested, and rotten ones removed. This is a simply carried out by putting the acorns in pot and lifting out the floaters.
Wash acorns and remove any the float or are sprouted
Stage 2 The husks need to loosened and the meat removed. Now this where things can start getting difficult. The meat of the acorn can naturally loosen away from husks in dry weather. In years where there has being a nice warm dry September I have simply shelled the fresh acorns. Different trees in different climates grow tighter nuts than others. If you have collected from English oaks, the cups will need to be removed as well, do this before soaking them water as the cups are very high a tannin and will cause you more work later on.
Stage 2a) After removing the cups, lay small amounts of acorns on a flat clean surface and gently tread on them, or roll and pin across them. You could also attempt bashing them in strong bowl with the end of a rolling pin. If you are lucky the acorns will break cleanly in half leaving with a husk and two bits of meat. Mine didn't do this, so I reverted to plan b.
Stage 2b) If your acorns are too tightly stuck in the husk, put them in a saucepan and pour boiling water over them and heat for no more than 10 minutes. You are aiming at blanching not cooking. With large quantities this becomes an art form. If you have starchy acorns and are cooked at this stage they will go powdery inside the husk. Wash the acorns under cold water once heated.
You now have about three days to remove the husks from the meat before the acorns start growing mould. I simply grabbed a handful and bashed them in a pestle and mortar.
So whack a few a with the pestle and split the meat from the husk. More hippy feet photobombing.
There are several ways of leeching the tannic and gallic acids out of the acorn meat. I wrapped my acorn meat in a tightly tied up old net curtain, but you can also use a pillow case. The most traditional, easiest and quickest is place the cloth bag in a clean stream with a stable water flow. The water flow shouldn't go to torrents or dry out during the period of leeching, it also needs to be free of rats. My last house I used go to the woods at the bottom of the garden where I had such a stream and tie the pillow case very tightly to a branch, and simple leave for a week or more. I have sinced moved and Llanelli has rat ridden streams prone to becoming raging torrents during rain.
Another simple method with smaller quantites is place the cloth bag with the acorns in it in the cistern of a toilet. I used this method when I lived in Stoke on Trent, which like Llanelli has no suitable streams. At the time I had two lovely big Victorian loos with large cisterns. Again like the stream method you need to leave it for a week or so. But alas this time, being a sucker for punishment I am doing 10 kgs of acorns and little plastic modern loo wouldn't flush if I put them in there.
The method I used this time was put the cloth bag in bucket and change the water at least once a day. This method of leeching is not as fast as the stream or the cistern, and it is certainly more work. I put the bucket next to the bath so I would remember to change the water, it also meant I could wash the bag of acorns under the shower as well as doing the water change. The whole process took about two weeks, before the acorns stopped tasting like a dry tea bag.
Stage 4. The acorns now need milling and drying. By this stage the combination of cooking some of the acorns instead of blanching and being too hard whacking them half my acorn meat was already powder. So emptied the leeching bag into my largest pot and milled by using the end of the rolling pin as pestle, in much the same way as African women pummel grain with the end of a dry log. At this point I took rehearsing some very difficult rhythms I am learning at drum group. An hour later I had the Uruguayan trance rhythm pretty much licked and pot of crude flour with bits in it. It is vital when processing wild food you find ways of not getting bored, good company, music, and practicing things like rhythms all help. This is why tribal societies process things like starches in groups, it make the whole thing not feel like work.
The crude lumpy flour was then transferred to dehydrator trays and dried overnight at 50c. The other times I have made acorn flour I haven't had a dehydrator, so I have dried in trays in an airing cupboard or in a very low oven for several hours. Halfway through drying you can pummel the flour a bit more, wait to the end. I always worry if the whole nuts get too dry they will become too hard to pound into flour.
When everything is dry , sieve, pound the bits and bag up the flour in air proof container.
Wow, da da .. da da deddedda da deedadad da da sorry after making acorn flour you need celebratory drum roll. It is not a lot of work, it is just project that took me three weeks complete, and two full evenings of pounding and dehusking first the fresh blanched acorns (this is normally quicker) and an evening pounding the dried leeched acorns in to flour.
Using the flour
The qualities of acorn flour depends heavily on what you have done during the processing. The more heat that the flour has being exposed to the less sticky and starchy it will be. Sometimes you have not much choice in how much hot water you expose your acorns to. This year batch the meat was really stuck to husk, which made the initial removal of the husks really hard work. I tried boiling about 2 kgs of acorns and it just resulted in the meat going to powde, and still not coming away from the husk. I am concerned that my final flour this year acts more like coconut flour, because of this over heating and will probably need mixing with other types of before using. Other years it has worked more like besan flour [chickpea/garbanzo bea], in that it binds to itself when wet. I can also mix it with plantian seeds or ground flax to increase stickiness.
Something I did notice is that when I tried to hang on the washing line in the rain to leach it, it started to partly ferment. It started to smell slightly like sourdough. Acorn flour can make bread, so I will try making sourdough with this years batch. I also might make fermented Asian flat breads called dosa with it. My breakfast this morning was acorn flat bread, it wasn't fermented or anything fancy, it was simply mixed with water to see if it fully leeched and has enough starches to bind. It kind of borderline on the binding front but it is fully leeched.
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Acorn flatbread with wild apples and local honey.
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