Foraging - Acorns, the Experiment - Part One

So I have to tell you this story.  I was visiting my sister last week and discovered "nuts" all over her ground.  I asked her what they were (no, I never paid attention to an acorn before, believe it or not).  The answer was acorns, to which I promptly asked "can you eat them".  She said "NO - they are poison".  I did a quick google search on my smart phone and discovered that people do, indeed, eat acorns so I picked up 1/2 a bucket of the best looking ones and took them home to figure the next steps out.   I have to insert now that a true pioneer woman probably did not have Google on their phone and I don't know how they were so smart to know what to forage without it.  But that is why I am so lucky to be a Suburban Pioneer.

After a considerable amount of research into eating acorns this is what I discovered.  People all over eat them after removing the bitter tannins from them through a soaking method.  They eat them as nuts and they grind them into an acorn flour to cook with.  Acorns are very nutritious, organic, and FREE, and since I bake a lot with nuts, I began to process these acorns.

First I put all my raw little acorns in a bucket of water.  The "good" ones sink and the "bad" ones float. 

I had about 1/2 sinkers so I soaked them for a little while and then laid them out between 2 abandoned screens outside to dry thoroughly.

I have to tell you right now about bugs.  Little icky worms LOVE acorns and apparently they grow in them from the inside out.  You need a strong stomach to crack very many of the little nuts unless you LOVE worms.  Every 20 or so acorns had a little grub worm inside.   Extra protein?  I THINK NOT!  I am hoping that the ones with the worms floated and I threw them out!

Now to soak the tannins from acorn nuts, you must crack them first (not too tough except for the gross worms) and remove the nutmeat.  It is a kind of white and looks kind of tasty... but don't eat it yet.. it is bitter and makes you spit it in the sink.  There were several methods suggested for soaking the tannins from your nuts.   They included burying them in mud for a season, putting them in a bag in a running stream for a long time, putting a bag of them in your toilet tank to get "rinsed with every flush", soaking them in cold water for several days or boiling them several times in succession until the water ran clear.  Tannins appear to leave the nuts in the water and turn your water kind of brown when you soak them. 

So without a running creek outside my back door, and not trusting the mud bury idea, I considered the toilet tank but finally decided on the cold water soak for several days on the sink.  The boiling water idea sounded quicker but apparently if you do it wrong you can "lock" the tannins in forever, making them bitter.  Here are my nuts soaking.

Now this is Part One of the Acorns posts because I have not had success with this experiment yet.  We did soak a few for about 18 hours and then dehydrate them to dry them and the result so far has been less than palatable.  The dehydrated acorns are brown, unappetizing to look at, tough to chew, and pretty bitter yet.  I would guess I did not soak enough of the tannins from them so I am not too eager to eat them.

So Part Two of the Acorns Experiment will come in a few days when I determine the ultimate success or failure of this project.  In the meantime, I don't recommend picking up acorns yet.. but if you do, store the acorns in something that doesn't allow the worms to escape into your house.  I don't think they are harmful but they are not welcome on my kitchen counter!