Acorns from different oaks ripen at different times of the year. Oaks can vary on the time they take to ripen acorns – from 6 to 24 months, which is why some trees have prolific acorns one year and virtually none the next. White oak acorns are sweeter and lower in tannin than red oak acorns. Some don’t drop until after a hard freeze and lots of rain, others fall before the leaves do. Some are best gathered in the spring and others in the fall. If you wait until the acorn is just sprouting, it has fewer tannins and is sweeter than if you gather them right after they drop. Of course, you have to contend with squirrels and other creatures gathering them firs if you wait too long.
Gathering acorns is good exercise, with all the walking, bending, picking up, and hauling bags of acorns. If you're getting old and stiff it can help loosen you up. If you really must, you can use a nut harvester. Just don't let the basket get too full before emptying or nuts will fall out faster than they are picked up.
Once you gather the acorns, shell them and put the nutmeats into a plastic freezer bag and freeze them until you have enough to start processing them.
You can also roast the nuts before shelling them, which can make the shelling easier. Spread the acorns in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast at 250ºF for half an hour. You’ll need to process them within a few days because they are high in oils and will start rotting. This isn’t a full on roast, because you still have to leach the nutmeats, this is just enough roast to kill any larva egg inside the nutmeats and to provide a little preservation if you plan to collect and process a lot more nuts than a single day’s harvest.
Shelling can be time-consuming. Acorns have easy to crack shells - some are so easy, all you have to do is pop their caps off and pinch them at the tops, then peel the shell off. If you intend to harvest lots of nuts (acorns, pecans, walnut, hazelnuts, and other soft shelled nuts, invest in a good quality nut sheller like Davebuilt Nutcracker. It costs about $150, but it’s so worth it. You can crack pounds of nuts in minutes. Pre-roast the acorns before using this nutcracker so the shell is brittle enough to crack.
If you don’t have a good quality cracker, then you can put a 3” layer of acorns in the bottom of a large, heavy bucket or wooden bowl and pound them with a pestle. Pound lightly, just enough to crack the shells, but not enough to pulverize the nutmeats. Put a piece of ½” hardware cloth over the top of another bucket or bowl and pour the cracked nuts over the screen, forcing the nutmeats through by rubbing. Uncracked nuts go back in the first bucket to be cracked again. There may be a few that need to be hand-cracked and peeled (there almost always are).
As you crack the acorns, check the meat. It should be yellowish, not black and dusty. Black and dusty means insects.
Once the nuts are well cracked, you’ll need to winnow the shells out. Set up a fan with a large bowl or cloth beneath it and slowly pour the nut meats in front of the fan set on medium or high. You may need to winnow the nutmeats several times, and still have to hand pick the larger shells out anyway.
This is one of the fastest methods of shelling acorns – much faster than cracking and peeling each individual acorn.
I prefer a cold water leaching because it’s practically foolproof. If you do the hot water leaching wrong, the tannins get locked inside the acorns and they will never sweeten.
The easiest way to process acorns is with a good blender. Use 3 cups of water per cup of acorns and liquefy them. They have to be finely ground in water and leached of tannins. Once the acorns are liquefied, put them in wide-mouthed quart jars in a refrigerator. Every day, until the water stays clear, pour off the water from the jars (the acorn meal will settle to the bottom, but if you want to pour through a fine sieve, go ahead. I do.) and refill with fresh water.
Once the acorns are leached, you can strain them and use them immediately in a recipe, or you can cook and freeze them to use later.
To cook the acorn meal, you need to simmer them in water for 15 minutes, stirring constantly because they will burn and stick if you don’t. Pour them into 2-cup sized containers, cool, then freeze.
To thaw, set the frozen acorn meal into a fine sieve and let it thaw over a bowl. Once it’s thawed, give it an extra squeeze through fine muslin to remove more water, and then use the meal in recipes. Discard the water.
You can also air dry acorns after they’ve been leached. Spread the acorns out in a thin layer on fine muslin or silk and suspend so air circulates around them. During the drying process, you have to stir the acorn meal well twice a day; otherwise little “rocks” of acorns will form. You will have to pinch the mealy lumps to break them up. I use a small Japanese desktop sand Zen garden rake to stir the acorn meal, pinching as needed.
If you do this outdoors (with all that lovely free wind), and you’ll have to fight off squirrels, field mice, and other acorn-loving critters. I usually end up dehydrating my acorns in the oven, with really small batches dried in a food dehydrator. You still have to stir often and pinch lumps, but it’s faster. I have a gas oven, so I set it as low as I can (175ºF) and let it dry slowly over several days.
After they cool, grind them again to make the meal as fine as possible.
Once the acorns are completely dry, you can vacuum seal them or store them in airtight jars or freeze them for later use.
You can substitute acorn meal for cornmeal or whole wheat in almost any recipe.
Apache Acorn Cakes
1 cup acorn meal, ground fine
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup honey
pinch of salt
Mix the ingredients with enough warm water to make a moist but not sticky dough. Divide into 12 balls. Let rest, covered, for 10 minutes or so. With slightly moist hands, pat the balls down into thick tortilla-shaped breads. Bake on an ungreased cast iron griddle over medium flames or heat on a stove or campfire coals or on clean large dry rocks, propped up slightly before the coals. If using the stones, have them hot when you place the cakes on them. You’ll have to lightly peel an edge to peek and see if they are done. They will be slightly brown. Turn them over and bake on the other side, if necessary.
Multi-Grain Bread or Rolls
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup coarse ground, leached acorn meal
1 cup lukewarm water
2 Tbsp. dry granulated yeast
2 1/2 cups boiling water
1 Tbsp. salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
About 8 cups flour (bread flour or whole wheat flour)
1/2 cup honey
butter
Pour boiling water over the oats, cornmeal, and acorn meal. Set aside. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water. In a large mixing bowl, beat the hot oatmeal mixture with the rest of the ingredients, except for the yeast and butter, adding the flour a cup at a time until you get a medium batter. Cool to lukewarm. Then add the yeast. This helps the dough rise with the heavy acorn meal. The final bread will still be dense and heavy and can make very, very thin slices. Mix well and add enough flour until you have a spongy dough that is not sticky. Knead, adding more flour if necessary to keep from being sticky. Place in a greased bowl and grease the top of dough, then cover it with a moist, warm kitchen towel and set it in a warm place until it doubles in size. Punch down, knead several times, and let rise again. Shape into loaves and place in greased bread pans or on a greased cookie sheet.
This also makes great rolls, so you can use a cake pan, making golf ball sized rolls. Cover and let rise again until almost double. Preheat the oven to 350° F and bake for about 35 minutes or until the tops are golden brown. Brush with butter and cool.
Mush
4 cups water
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup acorn meal, ground
about 1 cup cornmeal
Bring salted water to a boil and sprinkle the acorn meal into the boiling water, stirring briskly with a wire or twig whisk. Then add the cornmeal. Add just enough cornmeal to make a thick, bubbling batch in which a wood spoon will stand up fairly well. Place the saucepan in a larger container holding two inches or more of boiling water. (Use a double boiler, if you have one.) Simmer the mush until quite thick, about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep it from lumping. Cool slightly, add milk or cream and a dollop of jam.
This can also be used like polenta - cool it, slice and fry it. Top it with sweet or savory toppings. Salsa is very good on these fried slices of mush, with cheese. A hunter's sauce (brown gravy and mushrooms) is also excellent on it.
You can substitute acorn meal for part or all of the nuts in a recipe - they make awesome pecan sandies without using pecans. It's good in brownies and cakes. Replace part of the flour in pancakes or waffles with acorn meal.
Types of Oaks
If oaks don't grow where you live, plant some. There are oaks for every climate. Just look at this partial list of oaks.
And St Lawrence Nurseries, 325 State Hwy. 345, Potsdam, NY 13676 has grafted burr oaks whose acorns are so sweet you don't need to leach them at all. I love burr oaks.
White Oaks: The White Oaks have the sweetest acorns, which require the least processing. Among these sweetest acorns, 4 are the sweetest of all, requiring little to no processing at all to be edible: Emory oak, white oak, swamp oak, and burr oak.
Quercus alba – white oak (sweet, needs very little processing)
Q. bicolor – swamp oak (Sweet, needs very little processing)
Q. emoryi - emory oak (sweetest oak, acorns need little to no processing)
Q. imbricaria – shingle oak
Q. macrocarpa – burr oak (sweet, needs very little processing)
Q. marilandica – blackjack oak
Q. michaexii – swamp chestnut oak
Q. nigra – water oak
Q. phellos – willow oak
Q. prinus – chestnut oak
Q. stellata – post oak
Q. virginiana – live oak
Red Oaks: The red oak acorns are more bitter than the white oaks, but are also higher in nutrients. They all require more processing than any white oak.
Q. coccinea – scarlet oak
Q. falcate – southern red oak
Q. lyrata – overcap oak
Q. muehlenbergii – chinquapin oak
Q. pagoda – cherrybark oak
Q. palustris – pin oak
Q. Rubra – northern red oak
Q. shumardii – Shumard’s Oak
Q. velutina – black oak (very bitter, needs lots of processing)