How to gather and cook Acorns

The Acorn is normally something most people consider to be nothing more than an annoying clean-up project, but learning how to gather and cook acorns used to be a common skill, and provided food for our ancestors for thousands of years and is relied on by many species of wild animals. Most people today have forgotten that acorns are even edible, and simply leave them where they are and pass up on the chance to get tons of free food.

The best time to gather acorns is in the fall when the bulk of them have started to drop. A large fully formed oak tree can easily drop over half a ton of acorns in its shedding season, so find a good tree and you won’t have to work as hard gathering them. Depending on where the trees are, you might need to get permission before gathering, but almost everyone you ask won’t care in the slightest about a load of fallen acorns.

Where to find acorns

Public parks, graveyards, large estates, and farmland are a good choice, but you will most likely have to ask for permission for trees in these areas. If you don’t want to ask anyone then find an Oak tree that has grown in the wild and standard foraging laws will apply to it. In the UK it is legal to gather anything from a plant that has grown wildly with a few exceptions, like not being able to dig the plant up at the roots or gather anything poisonous. This means that any acorns you find from a wild tree are yours for the taking.

(An oak tree of this size can easily drop over half a ton of acorns during a good year)

The best way to gather them is to sweep them into a big pile and simply scoop them into a container. The gathering part isn’t the problem, that comes later when you have to spend ages processing them.

After you have collected hundreds of acorns and are now at home looking at them and wondering if you’ve just wasted your morning, it’s now time to process them. If any of your acorns are especially soft then they have probably started to rot, or if the flesh inside is still green then they are unripe. Acorns tend to rot quite quickly and are a favorite of animals, so make sure you pick the right time to grab some.

Why do people think that acorns aren’t edible?

Acorns are one of the few wild foods contain a large amount of tannin, a preservative the tree naturally produces. It is a type of oil that makes the skin waterproof and reduces the chances of insects burrowing in, but it needs to be removed before people can safely eat it. If you consume more than a few raw acorns, then the tannin will give you a huge headache and make you feel very nauseous, though you would have to eat more than you possibly could for it to be deadly.

(The discoloration to the water is all of the tannins that leeched out)

How to process your Acorns

Step 1 – De-shelling

The shells of the Acorns aren’t edible and need to be removed, they won’t do you any harm if eaten but are hard, sharp, and taste bad so the first thing to do is remove them.

The easiest way to do this is to dry them first and crack the shells open. You can either do this by placing them on a drying rack or tray, and leaving them in a gentle breeze or direct sunlight if it’s hot enough. Air drying can take several days but is much easier when you have thousands of acorns to work with, or you could speed the process up in the oven. Just like making jerky, put the acorns in the oven on the lowest setting and bake them for several hours, checking one every 30 minutes to see how they’re doing.

After baking, the shells can be easily cracked and peeled off, but maybe put them in a cloth before smashing them up so you don’t get pieces of acorn shell all over your kitchen. After the shell fragments have been removed and you have a bowl with nothing but the flesh in it, it’s time to check them over for bad ones. Dark spots and holes are signs of decomposition and worms, so if it’s not consistently white on the inside then get rid of it.

(When it comes to deciding how many to gather, make sure you have the means to dry them)

If you are in a hurry or in a bushcraft or survival situation, then the whole acorns can just be smashed to pieces and put in a bag before moving on to the next stage and removing the shells afterward.

Step 2 – removing the Tannin

Take your dried de-shelled Acorns and crush them up in a blender. You want to get them about the consistency of course corn meal instead of powdered. Smashing them to pieces with a hammer also works well, but however you do it, the goal is it get them into small enough pieces so the tannin can soak out.

After they are crushed put them in a container and fill it with at least twice as much cold water as your nuts take up and set it aside. Over the next few hours, you will see the water turn a yellowish-brown color which is the tannin escaping into the water. Change the water every few hours until it stays clear, and feel free to try a piece every so often to see how bitter it is.

The fastest way is to place the crushed acorns in a fabric bag and leave it in running water like a clean stream, which is the only way to do it in a bushcraft scenario. At home, the only option would be to leave the tap running for half a day, which wouldn’t be worth it. Whatever your method is of removing the tannins, keep doing it until they can sit in clear water for an hour without changing its color.

step 3 – Cooking

After your acorn grit is free of those bitter tannins it’s time to drain them. A piece of cloth or fine sieve works best, but whatever gets as much of the water out of them as possible. After they have been dried, your chunky Acorn paste is ready to cook with. If you don’t want to use it right away you can freeze it for as long as you like, or put it in a sealed container and keep it in the fridge.

The one thing to remember is that this is a type of nut, and there are only so many ways you can use them. Grinding the paste into flour and using it to make bread works very well if you like super nutty bread of course. Try to think of how many recipes you could realistically use acorn paste or flour in, and gather accordingly.