Edible Acorns

@GrizzlyetteAdams you and others will love this.i found this vintage film of california native americans harvesting,storing,leeching and cooking acorns in their traditional ways.you are going to love all the lost knowledge here and the fine baskets.highly skilled people.glad they got to film this before it was lost to time.

i found a date for these anthropology series filmed by Berkley...1963.

 

parts1 and 2

 

1961...
Pine Nuts (Paiute & Washo)

 

information i have never seen presented anywhere...making poison buckeye edible..i think i will pass...but interesting none the less.

 

I absolutely treasured these videos. Thank you!!!!!

Here is a detailed account of the acorn process: (much more info at the link)

http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/NAIFood/acorns.htm

Acorns are gathered in the fall after they are ripe, Early in the season you will occasionally find acorns without their “little hats” lying on the ground. These are usually buggy. (If the acorn is so heavy that it pulls itself from its cap, it is usually because there is a worm flipping itself about inside the acorn, and all this activity is what breaks the nut free from its cap and the tree.) When the acorns are actually ripe, they fall from the tree, cap intact. If you see any holes in them, throw them away. They are sometimes stored first, to dry them out, and then shelled. Other groups shell them first, and then dry them out by placing them someplace safe, yet warm, to dry. For the ultimate in information on processing acorn, refer to a new book about Yosemite’s Julia Parker, written by Park Naturalist Bev Ortiz which came out in 1992 or 1993. It was published by the same group that produces News from Native California, headed by Malcolm Margolin.

There is first and foremost, the original recipe: AFTER THE ACORNS ARE **COMPLETELY DRY** & REMOVED FROM THEIR SHELLS, the Acorns are ground until the meal is so fine that “it will stick to the basket sifter” when it is turned upside down. When you have determined that you have ground the acorns to “primo” consistency, you must then leach it. This was traditionally accomplished (before we had woven cloth to work with) by building a mound of fine sand, near a spring or the river, and then scooping out the center. The meal you wished to leach was placed in the center of this mound and water poured over a clean cedar bough which was placed or held above the acorn meal. The tannin would leach out of the acorn meal and harmlessly down into the sand. When tasting it showed the tannin had been removed, the meal was carefully removed from its sand “colander” and put into a cooking basket. Water is added — the correct amount for the amount of acorn meal you are going to use, which is something that takes a while to adjust to. Too much water will require cooking longer to get the consistency you want. Not enough water and the acorn will burn. Then special cooking rocks were heated in a fire, rinsed off, and using special stirring sticks, the rocks were stirred in the basket to heat the acorn solution thoroughly. As each rock cooled down, it was removed, and another hot clean rock took its place in the cooking basket. The rock that had been removed was washed off and placed back in the fire to reheat and await its turn to become a cooking implement once again. In what seems like no time at all, the acorn soup is boiling, and the stirring continues until the soup is of the desired consistency — either thin to eat with a spoon, or thicker to eat with a fork, depending on what the “cook” has in mind. Though the above “soup” was eaten straight by the traditional people, I usually add a little salt, and occasionally some dried currents or blue elderberries, or even raisins. Some people like to add a little cinnamon.

The rocks are saved for the next time, since finding perfect rocks that won’t explode when subjected to heat, or won’t crumble into the food, or give a bad taste, etc., are not as easy to find as you might think. The baskets, tools, implements, rocks, etc. used to cook acorn are considered a family legacy and kept within a family to be passed down from generation to generation. What makes a good cooking basket is the subject of another dissertation and shall not be gone into at this time. Ask the next expert basket weaver you meet to explain to you how a cooking basket is made.




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notice at 3rd video down(part2) at end shows them using more modern methods to process with...a hand crank food chopper...it looks like a grinder but its a chopper,modern flour sifter and cloth in the leaching.

one thing i often wondered was in a shtf deal if i could use acorns to feed my chickens. i know wild turkey eat them but i was thinking more of how to grind them a bit and dry..sorta like cracked corn maybe. i have a pretty sophisticated grist mill that does lots of things like hull sunflowers out.i git to wonder my adjusting it out if i could get a 'rough chop' with it on acorns. it would speed things up over hand cranking for sure.

 

thought yall might like this ...

 

Good morning Elkhound and Grizz,

Real good reading and pictures (I've transitioned to all hand crank tools already eg wood drill).

Ref: "exploding rocks";

For those "on the march", that is an evacuation by pods (FLC - Feet, leather covered [sometime rubber boots in this neck of the fruited plain]);

Don't make the acorn flour prep or any other fire with rocks alongside a river or other body of water. They may have water-filled cracks that can explode when heated. This is what's causing the referenced "exploding rocks".

I'm writing this for the non-agricultural background prepper.

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Basket Weaving merit badge plus Senior Life Saving course = Prepper, All Terrains, Add Hazards.

 

The Best Way to Make Acorn Flour

https://honest-food.net/acorn-flour-recipe-cold-process/

 

The Mechanics of Eating Acorns

https://honest-food.net/how-to-eat-acorns/