How to Eat Acorns

"Can people eat acorns?" That's what my older son asked me while we were hiking through the woods.

"Definitely! People have been eating acorns for thousands of years" is what I said.

So my son picked one up from the forest floor, cracked it, took a bite, winced and spit it out "Blech!!!"

"Blech" is probably exactly what ancient humans said the first time they tried to eat them too. But humanity is undeterred when hunger is knocking on the door which is probably why people first started to eat things like fish that will kill you if it's prepared wrong, or oysters, or cilantro.

Raw acorns taste awful because of the naturally occurring tannic acid in most varieties. 

Not only is it horribly bitter, but it's not particularly healthy to eat.

The good news is, you can remove it by boiling the heck out of the acorn meat. It's helpful to know that acorns from a white oak(the longer skinnier acorns) have less tannin than acorns from a red oak (the fatter, rounder acorns), so they need a lot less boiling.

Here's One Way to Prepare Acorns for Eating

There's lots of ways. Here's a really basic one.

1. Gather acorns. Just go out into the woods with oak and pick them up off the forest floor in late summer, early fall. Select ones that don't have holes in them, which indicates there's probably a worm in there. And remember, try to go for the white oak acorns (the longer, thinner ones) because they'll require less boiling.

2. Remove the shells. This can take a while so settle in. Put on a movie or something. I use a nut cracker, which doesn't crack the acorns since they're kind of green. Instead it sort of squishes them in half. I peel it open and pull out the acorn meat...or nut...or whatever you want to call it.

Bowl of Acorn Nuts

3. Boil the acorns in a pot of water until the water turns reddish brown. That reddish brown color is the tannic acid.

Before Boiling

After Boiling

4. Strain off the water, refill the pot and boil the acorns again. And again. And again. And again. Until they taste completely bland. This can take quite a few water changes. Last batch I did took 12 water changes...they were red oak acorns though. This is why it's important to use white oak acorns. The less tannic acid you need to remove, the fewer water changes you'll need.

When the acorns are bland to taste, they're good to eat.

5. Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees

6. Put the bland acorns on a baking sheet and drizzle olive oil over them.

7. Roast those suckers until they're golden brown and a little crunchy...maybe 15 minutes. 

8. Salt to taste.

Now...some folks turn acorns into acorn FLOUR, which apparently can be used as a flour replacement.  I've never done that. Maybe some day I'll do it and post it here.