Acorn Flour

Around 5 years ago, when I moved to where my house is, I formed a connection with two trees by my house. I knew one was an oak, I thought the other one was an oak, too (I wasn’t too familiar with plant ID just yet) but it’s a locust. The trees felt like a small sacred grove to me and I still sit and look out at them frequently.

This year, the oak blessed the area around my house with many acorns. My goats love the acorns and run to eat them when I let them out. I’m sure the squirrels and other critters love the acorns, too.

As I gathered up some acorns to use for acorn flour, I felt so fortunate to have that tree next to my house.

From my Nutritional Therapy studies,

One source describes acorns as “the bread of life” for early indigenous peoples … because it was “abundant, widespread, carbohydrate-rich, and trustworthy.” That trust was forged in the relationship these tribes were able to build with a plant food that demanded interaction and intention to be nourishing.

To make acorn flour, you have to leech the tannins from the acorns, otherwise they will be very bitter and upsetting to the stomach. I’ve made acorn flour before and this is the process I use:

First, break open the shells of the acorn to get the nut. Gather all the nuts and then grind them down into a powder. Put the acorn powder in a jar and fill it with water, put the jar in the fridge. Every 4 hours or so, or at least every day, drain the jar of water and refill it. Keep draining and refilling the jar of water until the water is no longer cloudy and runs clear. This can take 4 days - week. Now, drain the water from the jar completely so that you have just the acorn grains. You can use the grains wet from the water, or place them in a dehydrator and dry them out so that they are easier to use as a flour. You can split standard flour recipes, using half the called for flour as acorn flour, or you can add the acorn to oatmeal, coffee or cacao - there are many possibilities!

I’m excited to get started breaking open my acorns and making my next batch of acorn flour!