![]() ![]() Once you have shelled the cooled acorns, simply place them into a food processor and grind them into flour. I use this same method to prepare chestnuts into flour around the holidays, ground and then freeze the flour for baking throughout the year. The acorns will pop and some may burst open but within 15 minutes the acorns will crack open and be ready to shell once they have cooled. Remove the acorns with a slotted spoon onto a baking sheet and pop into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. This is how I’ve done chestnuts for years and it is perfect for acorns too.īring a large pot of water to a boil, drop the collection of acorns into the water and allow to boil (covered) for about 5 minutes. While some folks talk about cold leaching, which takes long hours of soaking, I prefer the method I have given you here. Leaching simply means to ‘remove’ a bitter taste from the nut before using them in cooking a process whereby the acids are drained away from the acorn using water. There is lots of talk about ‘ leaching’ acorns before using them. Yay! My yard has been trying to keep me healthy all these years and I am just discovering this! Leaching Acorns The wonderful news about acorn flour, especially if you have access to oak trees, is that it is loaded with fiber, fats, potassium, calcium and magnesium. Today was the day I added acorn foraging to my repertoire of culinary experiences as my grandchildren and I foraged, boiled, roasted and ground these annual acorns into flour and then ultimately into cookies! Foraging Acorns Acorn Flour Nutrientsįirst, of course, acorn flour is gluten-free, but then most nut flour is. I admit, in all my life, growing up around oak trees, I never gave it a thought. My grandson asked if these nuts were eatable. Today, along with my grandchildren, we set out to rake them up and put into the compost pile so yard maintenance could be tended to. Year after year the oak trees in my yard drop a gazillion of acorns into the ground. Today I baked cookies with the flour I processed but in the weeks ahead I will be trying a variety of other ways to use this luscious flour and still leave plenty acorns behind for the critters that will be looking for them in the cold winter months ahead. My first year to bake with acorn flour and it will not be my last! The harvest is huge, the process to prepare the flour was easy, though time consuming, and the flavor reminded me much of chestnut flour. That all changed today for me as I spent time with my grandchildren, foraging a huge bucket of acorns, one of the largest crops of acorns I have seen in my yard in quite some time, and turned them into cookies! Acorns Acorn Flour While acorns, from the oak tree, play an important role in forest ecology and are depended on by a wide variety of natures wildlife for sustenance, they are not widely known to us humans as an embraced nut in the culinary world. Use within one month.Roasted Acorn Flour Cookies are nutty, foraged, and in your backyard, roasted acorns turned into flour for the most delicious cookies. Store the flour in strong plastic food bags or in clean glass jars in the refrigerator or the freezer. After the meal is dried, grind it into a coarse flour using a grain grinder. If it is dry, you will feel no water content when your squeeze the meal between your fingers and the nut will be tender, not brittle. It can take one to two days until the meal is completely sun dried. Sun dried acorn meal is placed in a warm, sunny room and is covered with one layer of cheesecloth to prevent insects and dust from getting onto the meal. It will take eight to 10 hours for the meal to dry in a dehydrator. Spread the meal out on a fruit leather tray and set the drying temperature at 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Acorn meal can also be dried in a food dehydrator. Stir the acorn meal every 30 minutes until the meal appears dry, in four to eight hours. Set the oven on its lowest temperature and keep the oven door open so that the moisture from the acorn meal can escape. Spread the meal on a baking sheet and dry it in the oven. After the tannin has been leached from the acorn meal, the meal must be dried. ![]()
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