Let me start off by saying that the acorns in question are sawtooth oak acorns, which are not native to North America, where I live. So unlike if I were collecting acorns from a native oak tree, I’m not leaving behind more than I take. In fact I’m trying to collect as many as possible, specifically to prevent them from being buried by squirrels (I’ve yet to see any squirrels near these trees, ever, but still) and escape into the wild to become invasive.
I’ve got a giant box of them at home, and there are still more on the trees that aren’t ready to fall yet. So I’ve got tons of them. Here’s some I collected two days ago. And I just got back from gathering even more today (Haven’t transfered the pictures from my camera and phone to my laptop, though, so the observations haven’t’ been posted yet)
These trees are not native, they produce a ton of very large acorns, and I don’t want them to spread, so I figured, hey, acorns are edible once you remove the bitterness, so why not eat them?
This will be my first year having enough acorns available that I can try doing anything with them, so I’m looking for any tips or recipes I can use them in!
I plan to leech the tannins out of them once I have them out of the shell by keeping them in the fridge in cold water, and changing the water every day or so. And once the water stays clear I figured I’d throw them in the blender (maybe chopping or smashing them up a bit first? Most of them are coming out of the shell completely whole) and then dehydrate the result to get flour.
So! Any tips? Recipes? For now I intend to confine my acorn eating to non-native species, but please do share any information you’ve got about eating other species of oak, too! I heard from one employer that she tried, but could never get the bitterness out, so she gave up. Well, I’m determined to make this work, lol.