Using Acorns

[Tom A Hawk]

There are many ways to process acorns for food and I found this old video quite interesting.

 

[tenngun]

Saw that

 

[JamesT]

Very interesting. I have read before of boiling them to get the tannic acid out and then roasting them.

 

[windini]

Great video! Loved that Half Dome was in the background.


Where can I get the soundtrack?

 

[deerstalkert]

my mouth was watering through the entire video!
My mother prepared acorns much the same way, except we leached them after crushing them in a cloth bag, thrown into the creek and weighed down with a rock overnight.
then mom made a loaf much like meatloaf, or made the small loaves like this woman did.
i strained my eyes trying to see if i recognized "Maggie" but my eyes are to old.
the Ahwahneechee people along with the surrounding tribes were mostly wiped out in 1850's.
few of us remain.
thanks for the trip into my past.

 

[PathfinderNC]

So cool!

 

[Nuthatch]

I’m a big acorn fan. Been craving acorn bread (cornbread but with acorn meal instead of corn meal) for a few weeks so we’re going to drive up to the foothills to see if one of the good trees is producing much this year. It’s a lot of work but, like butchering game, it’s not unpleasant work. I take the lazy approach by sticking the shelled acorns in a blender with some water. We have a large glass jug that I’ll fill & drain once or twice a day. When the water rounds clear and the big chunks taste mild, it’s ready for the dehydrator. The good trees produce large nuts that only take a couple days to leech.

Videos & books from this period often have me wincing at the way they talk about Native Americans. All in context, I suppose. We’ll see how I sound to my grandkids some day.

 

[ghostdncr]

I have never made acorn bread but think I could make a reasonably good stab at it after watching "Maggie" do it. Thanks for posting that!

 

[Nuthatch]

I have never made acorn bread but think I could make a reasonably good stab at it after watching "Maggie" do it. Thanks for posting that!

Wouldn’t recommend that recipe. We did something similar, making pancakes with just acorn meal, eggs, water, oil. It wasn’t very appetizing. A basic cornbread recipe, replacing the cornmeal with acornmeal, is far and away a better dish. Or do half flour, half acornmeal for pancakes.

 

[ghostdncr]

It would probably be a good idea to stick with something you know the first time or two. Like cornbread. I was also curious about the berries she spooned onto the bread at the end. Partridge berries (Mitchella Repens) or some close variety, I'm guessing? It's occasionally referred to as squaw vine in some areas.

 

[Nuthatch]

It would probably be a good idea to stick with something you know the first time or two. Like cornbread. I was also curious about the berries she spooned onto the bread at the end. Partridge berries (Mitchella Repens) or some close variety, I'm guessing? It's occasionally referred to as squaw vine in some areas.

Skunkbush sumac more likely. Don’t think we have partridge berry here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_trilobata