acorns

[torakris]

In the Foods at the First Thanksgiving thread

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...=0entry442779

there was some discussion of eating acorns.

I know the Koreans eat them in a hard sliceable gelatin form called dotorimuk, are there any other cultures that eat acorns?

[guajolote]

squirrels do

[FistFullaRoux]

I've had a couple. Cub scouts. They are kinda bitter raw, a little better when roasted.

[Pan]

I recall reading when I was a child that some Native American tribes made an acorn bread that I seem to remember being called Wewish in some language or other. So I did a quick Yahoo! search on "acorn bread" and came up with these results.

Among the results is this page on Acorns and Acorn Bread.

[Ladybug]

My Dad made acorn bread once - I vaguely remember that he had to boil the acorns and change the water a bunch of times because they were so bitter and in the end, he did a truck load of work for very little return - the resulting bread was bland yet still faintly bitter and heavy. My Dad is no chef, but he is adventurous! He has a very thrifty side. He picks pears from the neglected tree in front of city hall in his town (that would otherwise rot) and makes crisps. He has picked dandelion greens for salad twenty years ago when no one else we knew had heard of it. He used to hunt and we ate doves, squirrel, deer, etc. He's raised his own chickens. I'm proud of my Dad.

[Adam Balic]

European types of oak produce acorns that have a lot of tannin, so are toxic/unpleasant if not heavinly processed. So maybe this is why there is little evidence of widespread acorn eating in European cultures (that and they had chestnuts as a much easier alternative). The were used to make a coffee substitute in WWI & II, but that is more sign of thrifty desperation that anything else I think.

American natives lucked out with the sweet white oak acorns, these have highish natural sugar and low tannins.

[fresco]

Think chestnut flour was used in parts of Italy simply because people couldn't afford wheat flour. Then it disappeared and now it's fashionable, but not among the poor.

[Adam Balic]

Think chestnut flour was used in parts of Italy simply because people couldn't afford wheat flour. Then it disappeared and now it's fashionable, but not among the poor.

Yes, that is correct (also used in France, Corsica, Sardinia etc), the point I was trying to make is if you are so poor that you can't afford grain flour, why go to all of the bother with processing acorns when chestnuts are available ?

[Wolfert]

Moroccans grill acorns over embers in the same manner of chestnuts and eat them as a snack. They also boil acorns in water, then dry and grind them to a floury state before using them to make couscous.

Oddly, the Moroccans don't use chestnuts in preparing stews the way Tunisians and Algerians do. The only chestnuts they eat are imported, grilled on braisers in the street and consumed out of hand.

[Adam Balic]

Moroccans grill acorns over embers in the same manner of chestnuts and eat them as a snack. They also boil acorns in water, then dry and grind them to a floury state before using them to make couscous.

Oddly, the Moroccans don't use chestnuts in preparing stews the way Tunisians and Algerians do. The only chestnuts they eat are imported, grilled on braisers in the street and consumed out of hand.

Do you know what type of acorns these are? Do they need special preparation to remove toxins etc?

One of the advantages of couscous I guess, you don't need gluten to make the granules.

[Wolfert]

It is the same as the one you mentioned growing in southern Europe. I think it is called cork oak or quercus suber L. In Tangier, the acorns were called jballa

Edited November 26, 2003 by Wolfert (log)

[Adam Balic]

Quercus suber is the cork oak. How interesting, I didn't realise that they were edible (acorns that is). I wonder if they eat them on Portugal?

[Wolfert]

Adam:

I don't know if anyone in Spain or Portugal is as poor as some of the Berbers in the Moroccan anti atlas mountains where acorns are part of the diet along with wild greens, roots, tubers, and goat's milk.

[Adam Balic]

Maybe not now, but the are enough 'poverty type' recipes in the cuisine to think that prehaps they once were.

Acorns from Quercus suber are quite small and would be a lot of effort to collect and husk etc to get enough to eat. I just hope they taste delicious as some type of reward.

[Wolfert]

Adam:

I think you might enjoy the book La pharmacopee marocaine traditionnelle by Jamal Bellakhdar. IBIS Press. isbn 2-910728-03-x. It is a 700 page fine-printed book packed with everything you would ever want to know about traditional Moroccan food, medical uses of plants and roots, and all backed up with written arab and french sources.

Under the cork acorn listing there is a lot of material devoted to uses of the hull including the grinding it to a powder and using it in medicine. According to Jamal Bellakhdar, the glands (peeled acorns) have a very smooth flavor, are very valued for winter storage (you thought only squirrels, right?), and are eaten raw or grilled in the streets.

he also provides some historical notes: During the time of the Saadians, the sultan Ahmed Al-Mansour fought the Ait Souab tribe trying to starve them out. These particular acorns kept them alive through a particularly harsh winter.

[Adam Balic]

Thank you Paula for the book suggestion. I am always on the lookout for information.

In one was going be in a town that was been starved out, I would prefer to be in "We were so desperate we had to invent Zampone", rather then "We were so desperate we had to in eat acorns".

[torakris]

my daughter Julia (1st grade) came home with some acorn cookies yesterday that they made at school.

Last week on trip to the park they collected the acorns and yesterday they turned them into cookies.

they were really quite good, had a nutty taste to them

[helenjp]

Edible acorns (i.e. the preferable ones)

"Shii" type trees produce milder acorns.

Pasania edulis (Matebashii - probably the pick of the Japanese varieties for eating)

Castanopsis cuspidata (Sudajii - a variety which belongs to a group related to chinquapins)

Quercus serrata (Konara - harsher, need to be soaked)

Take a closer look - lots of these don't look like "oak" trees!

tree pix

[jackal10]

I am reading "Oak" by William Bryant Logan, a Christmas present.

In it he claims that many early pre-history civilisations were balanocultures, using acorns as their original food source, rather than grains. He mentions native Californian American, and Korea among others as examples where the acorn is still eaten.

He cites a cook book "Acorns and eat 'em" by Sullean Ocean (now seems unobtainable).

Apparently you shell and grind the acorn, then wash out the bitter tannins to give a delicious and sustaining food, and from which porridge, breads and a delicate jelly can be made. A sweet manna can be made from the sap and exudates.

Could this be the next fashion food?

Anyone with knowledge or experience out there? Any recipes? I have lots of acorns.

[moosnsqrl]

I'm really digging into the depths of memory here but I'm fairly certain reference was made to this in the novel "My Side of the Mountain" which I read when I was probably 8 or so. It's about a boy who runs away from NYC and lives off of the land for a year. The author describes vividly how he hunted and gathered and steps he took to neutralize acrid flavors, etc, to make foods more palatable.

Naturally the movie version was disappointing in its lack of such detail. Some things haven't changed all that much.

[SuzySushi]

You may get other positive responses, but quite frankly I don't think acorns are worth the effort.

I've tried Korean acorn jelly (which is sold in markets here) and it's pretty blah. In fact, after a bite or two each, we quietly threw out the rest of the package.

[sparrowgrass]

There is a variety of acorn called a chinkapin which is sweet enough to eat out ot hand, but most have to be crushed and then held in running water to wash the tannins out.

Native Americans accomplished this by crushing the nutmeats and putting them in a basket in a running stream. My ex did this once, and I ate some of the bread he made. I prefer whole wheat.

[Peter the eater]

I am reading "Oak" by William Bryant Logan, a Christmas present.

In it he claims that many early pre-history civilisations were balanocultures, using acorns as their original food source, rather than grains.  He mentions native Californian American, and Korea among others as examples where the acorn is still eaten.

He cites a cook book "Acorns and eat 'em" by Sullean Ocean (now seems unobtainable).

Apparently you shell and grind the acorn, then wash out the bitter tannins to give a delicious and sustaining food, and from which porridge, breads and a delicate jelly can be made. A sweet manna can be made from the sap and exudates.

Could this be the next fashion food?

Anyone with knowledge or experience out there? Any recipes? I have lots of acorns.

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That is very interesting! I would love to see a survey of hardwoods and their associated food possibilities - there are lots o' nuts out there. And is there more than just "maple" syrup?

BTW just how many acorns do you have?

[jackal10]

BTW just how many acorns do you have?

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We have several large mature oaks on the property, so in the Autimn, allowing for squirrels, potentially maybe a couple of hundred pounds

[gini]

A few acorn recipes: Acorn delight!

A few pointers:

The black oak's acorns have better flavor and make less of a hassel to remove the tannin.

Don't eat acorns that have lost their hats!

It's a bit of work to process the acorns.

I might be interested though in making soem acorn grits if I could find acorn meal around here somewhere.