How to Make Acorn Flour
This post is a follow-up to the The Fantastic Four – 4 Essential Wild Edible Plants that May Just Save Your Life article. In this post, I demonstrate how to process and eat one of the core four essential plants: Acorns.
Turning those bitter tasting nuts that are found all over the place during the fall into something that is not only palatable but rather good tasting is not as difficult as one would think. In this post I’ll be demonstrating how to turn acorns into an awesome food source.
Step 1: Gather the Acorns
The first step is rather self-explanatory. But for the sake of being thorough I’ll go through it.
While you can collect them directly from the tree, the best place to gather acorns is right under the tree when they fall. Of course, the earlier you can grab these in the fall the better since you’ll be competing with all the other nut-loving creatures (squirrels, chipmunks, deer, acorn weevils, and other survivors besides you 
).
Step 2: Shell the Acorns
Similar to other nuts, you’ll need to remove the shell of the acorns before you can consume them. There are different ways to do this: Nutcracker, pounding it with a hammer and removing the nut meat, or my favorite way is a two-step process: first cut them all in half with a large kitchen knife and then work at popping out the nut meat using the sharp point of a smaller knife.
Step 3: Pulverize the Nut Meat
Now that you have all the nut meat out of the shells, you’ll want to grind these down as fine as possible. The old way is to use a big flat rock as your surface (acts as a mortar) and a smaller round rock used to crush and grind the nut (the pestle) into a fine consistency. Since I like to train in the old way but still use technology when possible, I like using my Greenstar juicer or a food processor. The nuts are softer than peanuts and will not damage these appliances.
Step 4: Leech the Tannins out of the Acorns
All the acorns that I’ve processed (yes, even white oak) required that I leeched the bitter tannins out of them before gobbling them down.
To do this, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour the acorn meal in it. Let it boil for 5+ minutes making sure to stir the pot so that some of the acorn meal doesn’t stick and burn at the bottom.
As an FYI, you could have skipped step 3 and just continued with this step, however I find that it takes way too long to process and wastes too much fuel. By using the ground up meal, it provides a greater surface area and leeches out the tannins much faster.
Step 5: Filter out the Acorn Flour from the Water
After your initial boil, filter out the acorn flour with a cheesecloth or an old t-shirt (even a sock will do in a pinch). I like to place a colander in my sink and then place the t-shirt or cheesecloth over the colander making a bowl-like depression with it.
After pouring the liquid into the cloth depression, be careful with the hot water. It’s best to pour cold water into the slurry until it cools off and you can then pick up the cloth filter to help strain the remaining water out.
After filtering, you’ll want to do a taste test. Is it still bitter? If so, repeat steps 4 and 5 until the bitterness is out.
Final Steps
At this point you’re left with essentially a ball of acorn-flour dough. If you want you can use this right away or if you want to save it for later, you can dry it out.
To dry it out, simply spread it out flat onto a cookie sheet and place it in the oven at the lowest temperature until it is completely dry, or do the same thing but instead place it outside (this takes longer). Placing it in a food dehydrator also works great.
After it has dried out you’ll probably notice that it has caked together (this is due to the high fat content). You can store it as is or further process it by crushing it into a powder (by hand or food processor). This acorn flour can then be used to make pancakes, bread, or added to cereals or soup.
Acorn Nutrition Information
Acorns are surprisingly nutritious and sustaining. Here’s the general nutrition info for 1 oz of dried acorn meal:
For more details into the protein quality and nutrient balance of acorns see the following link: http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3083/2
Related posts:
- The Fantastic Four – 4 Essential Wild Edible Plants that May Just Save Your Life
- How to Eat a Pine Tree
- How to Eat Cattail
- Posted in Wild Edibles, Wilderness Survival
Thanks for the great information. Next fall I’m going to give this a try.
Doug,
Why next fall? There should still be great acorns lying around ready to be eaten. Try it out if you can!
- Erich
Alright then, I will, this weekend. Great site, by the way!
That’s great Doug! Let me know how it turns out for you. If you need more pointers or help just let me know.
I tried it this past weekend. (see my blog for pics) I made acorn muffins. This is a LOT of work. Cracking the nuts, boiling them, straining them…. An then the muffins didn’t turn out that great. Edible, but not delicious. It’s nice to know it can be done in a pinch- but I hope I never have to use acorn flour again!
Jimmy,
First of all, that’s great that you went and made it! Hats off to ya. Knowing that you have that as an option is the most important thing.
As for the taste, I’m not sure what recipe you followed, but the bread I make (see recipe above) is really delicious – even to the most picky of eaters.
Look forward to seeing if you try any of the other four (pine, cattail etc)
- Erich
Erich, my kids filled a 5 gallon pail of acorns from a huge (estimated at 250 years) red oak I have on my property. I am going to make acorn flour and acorn bread with them this weekend. I have a few questions. Considering the high amount of tannin in red oak acorns for how long do you think I will have to boil the meats and how many changes of water? I read elsewhere that when changing water to be sure to put the meat back into already boiling water–cooler water sets the tannin. Have you heard of this? How many acorns should we use for a reasonable project, and can the left over acorns be dried for later use? If so, in the shell or hulled? Finally, where’s the acorn bread recipe you mention to Jimmy?
Hey Greg,
I’ve used red oak quite often when making acorn flour with great results. If you grind the acorns down to a course powder and boil that it usually will not take more than three boilings to leech out the tannins (at around 10-15 min per boiling session). You are absolutely right about making sure that the water is boiling before putting the acorns in (at each session) to ensure that the tannins don’t “set”. Also, if you can’t grind the acorns before boiling, just keep changing the water and boiling until the water no longer becomes dark from the tannins.
As far as storing the acorns, I found it best to simply process all the acorns and dry them into flour as explained above. The flour will store for a long time in the refrigerator. If you don’t have time to process them, store them in large ziplock bags, but don’t put them in the freezer (as some suggest) since I’ve found that they turn black and get ruined. Instead put them in the refrigerator until ready to use.
As far as how much to make, it seems as though 2 cups of acorns will make around 1 cup of flour. So just figure out how much flour you will need and adjust.
The acorn recipe is actually in the How to Eat Cattail article at the bottom. Just use 2 cups of acorn flour instead of 1 cup acorn / 1 cup cattail.
Hope that helps! Let me know if you need anything else.
- Erich