I went nutting! (And looked like a nut)

I recently discovered that 1) the tree the neighbors planted on my fenceline is a Texas live oak, and 2) with a bit of processing, acorns are not only edible, but possibly my favorite nut ever. The flavor is mild and slightly sweet, similar to pinenuts, and I've had great success with both acorn brittle and chocolate chip/acorn cookies. (And that's just the nut-meats. I haven't even tried milling it into acorn flour yet).

My experiments complete, and knowing that the acorn season is fast drawing to a close, I decided to take a full day and go a-nutting. Now I live in the city, and there are two nearby areas with lots of oak trees. The park, which is chock-full of squirrels, and a stretch of streetcar line where squirrels are few and far between. Preferring not to compete with rodents, I took a five-gallon bucket and hit the streetcar line.

What I learned:

1) When you walk down a busy city road with a bucket, picking up things off the (apparently bare) ground, people look at you like you're insane. I got a lot of curious looks, but only one person actually stopped to ask what I was doing. She was an elderly French lady, and when I explained, she said, "Oh, yes. People used to do that all the time back in France. I didn't know anybody did it here." Sadly, it seems like nobody does do it here. The friends I've mentioned it to invariably respond with, "wait... those are edible?"

2) Five-gallon buckets are HUGE, and live oak acorns are pretty small as acorns go. I picked up nuts for six hours before I ran out of steam and I still only got the doggone thing 3/4 filled.

3) On the surface, nutting sounded like very light exercise. I thought I was going for a gentle stroll. It didn't occur to me that I was setting out to do six hours of squats. My legs are killing me.

4) It was totally worth the effort. I priced it online, and acorn flour/nut meats run $25-$30/pound. Those little nuts that people rake up and throw in the garbage are, when turned into food, more valuable than fillet mignon (Can you imagine that 5-lb bag of flour at the grocery store costing $150?). When I'm dining on acorn bread and chopping up acorns to put in salads or sauces, I'll get to feel rich and fancy.

Who else out there harvests acorns for food? Who else has an oak tree they never realized was a food source?

jjdebenedictis said:

Now I'm very curious! What "bit of processing" is required?

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Acorns contain tannins that make them taste bitter (and, if you somehow choke down enough of them, can cause constipation). These need to be leeched out, which is easy, since tannin is water soluable.

If you want flour, you shell, grind, then cold-leech (basically soaking them for a few days, changing the water a couple times a day).

If you want nuts, you just shell them and hot-leech (boiling them and replacing the water every 20 minutes or so).

Hot or cold, the length of the leeching process depends on what kind of acorns you have. White oaks (live oaks fall into this category) have fewer tannins and process fairly quickly. Black oaks are more bitter to begin with and take longer. In both cases, you know they're done when they taste good.

The fiddly part is actually the shelling, which is made much easier by drying the nuts beforehand. The traditional method is to lay them out for a few days in the sun, but I find it quicker and easier to just pop them in the oven on the lowest setting (around 170F) with the door cracked open for 30 minutes or so.

(I can provide more details if you want to try it yourself, but you get the idea).

Chris P said:

After living in Mississippi, I have no fear of looking like a nut collecting pecans. Everybody does it!

I knew you could leach the tannins out of acorns, but I never had any luck. Three boils later and still as bitter as coffee grounds! I must have had the black oaks. I wonder if soil also has something to do with it?

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One mistake a lot of people make (I did it myself the first time), is adding cold water between boils. Apparently once the nuts cool, any remaining tannins bind hard to the meat and you'll never get rid of the bitterness. To avoid this, you have to pour off the boiling water and immediately add more boiling water.

It takes me about six boils per batch. I don't think mine are unusually bitter to start with, but I'm not sure because I currently have no basis of comparison.

AW Admin said:

I did in N.H. where we had lots of oaks. Not only are different kinds of acorns different in taste because of the amount of tannins, some trees are just sweeter.

I thought for a long time that Sweet Oak was a kind of oak; nope.

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Interesting! I'll be curious to see what kind of results I get as I try different trees. I already know of one young tree that has acorns three times the size of its neighbors. It barely dropped any this year, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.

I've been reading up, and apparently oaks will have a boom year every 4-5 years, but they're not synced up. I'd pass three or four trees with a so-so fall, then hit one where the acorns carpeted the ground an inch deep. It's interesting. I always admired the trees, but I didn't look at them that closely. All the years I've lived here, all the times I've walked that same route, and I never noticed the variation until I was looking for it.