Eating ACORNS 🌰: How to Forage, Store, & Cook Acorns

As a squirrel, I must voice my protest.

I was gathering pecans today and, walking back to my car passing through a crunchy carpet of acorn, thought to myself: "Too bad people can't eat acorns." And then this. The specificity of recommendation coincidence is a trip sometimes.

Dendrologist here! In general, red oak species tend to have a much higher tannin content than white oak species. White oaks also tend to have a higher sugar to protein content. This is why many species of wildlife tend to go after the white oak acorns first. Another good reason to not let the white oak acorns sit is they germinate immediately whereas red oaks often need to overwinter (cold stratify). Awesome video! Thank you for the content!

I use roasted and ground dandelion roots and mix them with the ground acorn meat before drying them. Gives it a slightly chocolatey/coffee type taste.

Personally I prefer just raking up all the acorns up into a bucket and using the float test to sort out the good from the bad. Basically, if the acorn has been eaten inside it will float in water and it quick lets you sort the majority of the good from bad. As a bonus it makes it so you don't leave bad acorns under the tree where the bugs can further infect the tree. A simple, long term pest control for better harvests.

I am sure that when I was a child I was warned that acorns were poisonous. I have since learned that most of the stuff I learned as a child was wrong.

As a Korean, I would like to add that acorn jelly is very tasty and also low in empty calories than processed grain :) (it's considered a good food to eat when on a diet)

I've briefly scrolled through the comment section, but found nothing that says how intelligently written, and beautifully read your little lecture is. It's also delivered with a lovely sense of humour. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching your YouTube dissertation, very very weldone! I have a small holding in the hills on the Wales England border. I have too many oak trees to count! So thank you for taking the time and making the effort

My daughter and I saw your video at 4 PM, then collect/process for a half corn meal/half White Oak acorn bread for supper. Added two tablespoons of honey. It tasted almost like banana nut bread at supper. It was awesome.

Never tried eating acorns, I knew you could as a kid but taking the caps off and throwing them at my older brother was always more enjoyable but usually ended in a fight

I've heard stories from my family that during ww2 in cities in the Soviet Union, people would try to make use of the acorns to make food because of how starved they were while under siege. But, a lot of those people or at least some of them died from the acorns and because of this I assumed they were poisonous. After a bit of research I found that the tanin which apparently is indeed toxic, was probably what caused the deaths but the leaching process makes the acorns completely safe. Glad to see an in depth guide on how to do this stuff and this really made me realize how underused this stuff was

When changing the water to leach bring the change of water to a boil before adding as cold water helps to bind the tannins to the nutmeat. It takes just 3 or 4 changes of water using the only hot water method. In the mid Atlantic area Chestnut Oak give you best and largest acorns you will commonly find. Acorn flour that still tastes bitter can be used as a coating over various fruits for drying, it works fantastic with persimmons. Just rinse off the flour before eating, keeps bugs off and the fruit from sticking to everything.

You are the first person to ever mention the Yurok! My family comes from Weitchpec and we still own land there. The Yuroks spend most of the fall across the Klamath River gathering acorns. My childhood memories are rich with gathering acorns for my Great Grandmother to make porridge.

I took a field ecology class in college. We did a lesson on hunter gatherers where we had to collect acorns with different "technology" (bare hands, with bags, as a team etc). The TA then gave us extra credit for taking our acorns home, making flour and bringing him something edible. It was a really interesting class!

My dad was in the service with Dave from Davebuilt in the early 50's. They were stationed in France together and Dave was the best man in my parent's wedding. After the service Dave started inventing tools to help the walnut (or nut) industry in California. I attest his inventions and designs are first rate, and Dave is honest in his dealings. It was a surprise to see his nutcracker in the video. My father owns one, and I've used it, and it works great!

Thank you for this! When I was younger I read about how the local tribes where I grew up would eat acorns as part of their diet. So at one point I crushed an acorn with a nutcracker and tasted it to see what it was like. As you might imagine, I concluded that my modern palate was too far removed from theirs to find it remotely palatable. I'm pleased to see that—perhaps predictably—I was doing it wrong!

During much of the 20th century my family, like many Germans, survived by eating cabbage, nettles, potatoes, and acorns. Acorn coffee was standard fare, especially, when even roasted grain was not available to many people anymore. Thank you for a very well-done video.

The writing of this presentation gets an A+

This is a great video, I collected & processed acorns into flour one year and used it in cookies & pancakes. Southern Oregon oak species include saddlers oak, black oak and tan oak which were important food sources for local tribes. It is a mistake to assume tribes did not tend the land or practice agriculture. Most tribes intentionally tended the land with fire, burning under different conditions for different purposes. Fire helped reduce the vegetation under oak canopies making acorns easier to collect, reducing the insect density and reducing competition with oak seedlings, ensuring oak trees of many ages so there were always young trees to replace those lost. Tribes also used fire to drive game into confined areas to make hunting easier, stimulate new growth attractive to browsing game and modify shrub growth to generate wood suitable for tools & arrows. While it is true the tribes of southern Oregon and Northern California did not live in permanent settlements they had an annual cycle that brought them back to the same areas every year. Many tribes had policies whereby areas of valuable resources such as camas swales or berry patches belonged to individual families, and were passed down the matriarchal lineage. Most of these resources were managed to ensure they were not over harvested and even expanded over time. Woodlands & forests were managed for specific species with intentional planting of beneficial species and removal of less useful ones, resulting in food forests with higher than normal concentrations of food plants. The remnants of these historic food forests can still be found. I would argue that they were practicing agriculture and land stewardship, they cared for the land to ensure there was enough food left for the animals and that the plants would persist to feed future generations. European settlers did not find an untouched wilderness but one that had been intentionally developed through thousands of years of stewardship. Blessings 😊

This is a tree-mendous video you've put together! I knew you could eat them, I just didn't realize how valuable they were as a food stuff. Thank you so much for taking the time. With October upon us, I plan on doing some acorn collecting and making a heap of flour.