Acorn
One of my favorite Korean 반찬 is acorn jelly in a bit of soy, sesame, and scallions. Of course, most restaurants don't use acorns for this dish. They typically use gelatin or agar agar.
Mom once foraged for acorns, made flour, and made real acorn jelly. It was absolutely delicious.
Foraging
Different types of acorns:
- Easier to determine type of oak by leaf than by acorn
- Valley Oak acorns are big, low in tannins, and carbohydrate-rich (resulting in a drier flour)
- Other low in tannins:
- Biggest acorns: Black oak (California), White oak (east coast), Burr oak (Midwest)
- Others: Emory oak (southwest), Pin oak (south), Blue oak (California), Cork oak, Bellota oak. Lots of California cities plant cork and burr oaks.
- Fattiest (good for oil):
- West Coast: Live oaks, Coastal oak, Interior live oak, tanoak, black oak
- East Coast: Red oak
Gather acorns anytime from September through March. Best to gather when they've fallen.
- Avoid acorns with little holes in shell, a sure sign of oak weevil larvae.
- 1 lb acorns => 1 cup flour
- Suellen Ocean (author of, Acorns and Eat 'em) collects sprouted Tanoak acorns (sprouts up to 1-2 inches long, but before meat turns green) in February and March. Recently sprouted acorns aren't wormy and have begun converting starch to sugar.
See also:
- "Traditional and modern methods of acorn preparation." Also has information on bay nuts.
- "Acorns: Not just for squirrels anymore"
Flour
Dry the acorns in the sun for 2 (for brown) to 5 (for green) days in wide, shallow pans. Dried acorns will keep for up to two years.
Shelling. Put flat end (where cap covered) on firm surface, whack the pointy end with hammer. With long, tapered acorns, whack the side. Put shelled acorns in water to prevent oxidization.
Some acorns (e.g. red oak) have "test" (i.e. a skin like a chestnut). Either boil 5-10 at a time, and shell those while hot, or freeze the fresh acorns (recommended). Skin will come off more easily.
Grind raw acorns into flour using Vitamix.
Leaching. Mix 1 cup of acorn meal to 3 cups water. Pour into glass jar, and refrigerate. Every day, shake the jar, wait 12 hours or more, and pour off the water through cheesecloth. Repeat for 3-5 days or up to 2 weeks, depending on how bitter the acorns are.
Dry the flour in oven set at warm. Grind one more time.
Freeze fresh acorn meal. Store dried flour in refrigerator.
See also:
References
Hank Shaw, as always, has a number of great resources on cooking and eating acorns (including the one linked above):
