Ingredients
- as many acorns as you can find
Directions
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Gather the acorns after they have fallen. Put them in a pail of water- the good ones will sink, then bad ones will float. Discard any with caps still attached or with obvious bug holes.
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Place acorns on rimmed baking sheets. Roast at 250 degrees for 1 hour. Cool overnight.
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Remove shells. Cull any that don’t look good-
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dark coloring, or insect infestation.
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Grind the meat into a coarse meal resembling almond meal.
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Leach the acorn meal by filling a glass jar no more than 1/3 full of acorn meal. If you have that much, can be processed in gallon jars, but for small quantities, a quart jar will do. About 1/3 quart will produce about 2 Tbsp. flour.
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Fill the jar the rest of the way with cool water, stirring gently with a long wooden spoon.
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At first the water will be cloudy, but as it settles, will turn tea-colored water above.
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Let the jar sit for several hours at room temperature before carefully decanting the water off the acorn meal, being careful not to disturb the layer of starch on top.
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Again, fill the jar with fresh water while gently stirring the acorns, and after a few hours decant the tannic water. This process is repeated as many times as it takes to remove the bitter taste from the acorns. At two empties per day, generally this will take about a week/ The only way to know is to taste the acorns. If your home is overly warm, or you need to change the water less often, let the jars of acorns leach in the refrigerator.
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Once you are satisfied with the taste, pour off half of the tannic water. Line a strainer with a cotton tea towel, and place it in your kitchen sink. Give the acorns and water a good stir, then pour the contents of the jar into the strainer. Let the water drain for 5 minutes. Then, gather up the edges of the towel around the leached acorn meal and squeeze out most of the remaining water.
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Use your hands or an offset spatula to evenly distribute the wet acorn meal of a dehydrator sheet. Dehydrate the meal at least overnight or until it seems completely dry. Once dehydrated, acorn meal can be stored in your pantry in a jar.
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When ready to use, the meal can be ground into a flour using a spice grinder to get just what you need for the recipe. Some recipes include acorn falafel, acorn lace cookies, and All Acorn Brownies.