Acorn Recipes and Resources (2024)

FAQs

What foods can you make with acorns? ›

Acorns can be ground to make flour for bread, pancakes, pastries, cookies and even pasta. If you plan to do this, it's best to leach with cold water to preserve the starch and help the dough hold together better. If you're going to keep your acorns whole, or at least chunky, you can leach them with boiling water.

Simply glue acorns together to make little comic figures, using matchsticks or toothpicks for arms and legs, felt-tip pens to add features and lumps of clay for shoes. The acorn cup makes a natural hat! Kids love simple DIY projects, and they're a great way to pass the time on a rainy fall day.

Raw acorns are considered unsafe due to their tannins, which are toxic if consumed in high amounts. However, you can remove the tannins by boiling or soaking. Properly prepared acorns are perfectly edible and full of nutrients like iron and manganese. Delicious roasted, they can also be ground into flour.

One of the easiest ways to cook acorns is to roast them. Place the damp nut chunks on a baking sheet and sprinkle with fine salt. Toast them for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees in a pre-heated oven, or roll them around in a dry frying pan over the camp fire.

Raw acorns are very bitter and gritty and must be processed prior to eating. Acorns that are leached or roasted are nutty and sweet. For some people, the taste of leached acorns is similar to that of boiled potatoes. While many oak species give bitter-tasting acorns, some produce sweeter nuts like European white oaks.

Just hope it wasn't a crow because they're well known to hold grudges. Acorns go for $2 to $5 a pound. On average, north of $2000 worth of acorn ya got there.

Keeping acorns picked up and off lawns is good garden and yard maintenance. A heavy acorn crop can damage a lawn by smothering tender leaf blades under the nut. Acorns allowed to lay on grass for extended periods of time can kill grass and if left to lie in the garden turns the garden into an oak nursery.

#1 incredibly annoying fact: acorns are quite perishable. They fall into a category called “recalcitrant” seeds which means they are fussy about living. They don't like to freeze, dry out, suffocate, get hot and they get fungus.

Acorns have tannins, which taste bitter. They're toxic if consumed in large amounts and can block your body's ability to absorb nutrients. This means tannin is actually an anti-nutrient.

The acorn is the fruit of the oak tree. It is a nut, and has a single seed (rarely two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell. Acorns vary from 1 – 6 cm long and 0.8 – 4 cm broad. Acorns take between about 6 or 24 months (depending on the species) to mature.

Which acorns are best to eat? ›

Generally, the best acorns to harvest are those of the white oaks, such as the swamp oak, Oregon white oak, and burr oak, as they contain less bitter tannin. Luckily, nearly all acorns can be made usable with natural processing which renders them nutty and sweet.

Raw acorns are very bitter and gritty and must be processed prior to eating. Acorns that are leached or roasted are nutty and sweet. For some people, the taste of leached acorns is similar to that of boiled potatoes. While many oak species give bitter-tasting acorns, some produce sweeter nuts like European white oaks.

To do this, the acorns were dried for one year, shelled, winnowed to remove a thin inner shell, pounded into flour, sifted repeatedly through finely-woven baskets, leached by rinsing in water, then cooked into a mush like grits.

Generally, the best acorns to harvest are those of the white oaks, such as the swamp oak, Oregon white oak, and burr oak, as they contain less bitter tannin. Luckily, nearly all acorns can be made usable with natural processing which renders them nutty and sweet.