There are many traditional and modern options for leaching, depending upon your setup and how you wish to use them. Eating excessive amounts of tannins contained in raw, unleached acorns can be poisonous for humans. Pick out the nutmeats, discarding any that are moldy.Īcorns must be leached.
If you don’t have a traditional grinding stone or mortar and pestle, you can improvise by cracking the acorns briskly between a heavy object and a hard surface-say, a piece of firewood or cast-iron skillet against a butcher block. According to California Native traditions, acorns are stored with boughs of California bay leaves, a natural antimicrobial, to prevent molding.Ĭrack the acorns. Store in a basket with plenty of airflow until you’re ready to proceed. Spread the good acorns on a flat surface in the sun to dry, or put them on a cookie sheet and place in a very low oven for a few hours (even just the pilot light should be sufficient). If you do not have time to immediately proceed to the cracking and leaching step, dry them to prevent molding and sprouting. For maximum yield, you can put them all in the freezer-this will kill any remaining weevils. Immediately when you get home, dump them into a large bucket of water-discard (compost or burn in your fireplace) the ones that float, keeping the ones that sink. Collect only large, dense acorns, passing up those that have obvious weevil holes or that are unusually light. Gather acorns when you notice they are dropping, usually from September to December. Miwok cultural representative Julia Parker demonstrated both traditional and modern acorn preparation methods that we continue to practice whenever we get the chance.
You can buy this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center Cookbook.Ī weekend convergence at OAEC sponsored by the Cultural Conservancy called Decolonizing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Spirits: Native Foods Think Tank, brought together cultural leaders, scholars, activists, and chefs representing 15 US and Canadian tribes to explore the importance of the restoration of Native foods to community health. The following excerpt is from “Main Dishes: Using Grains, Beans, Eggs, and Cheese.” The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center is a farm, community center and educational retreat that has promoted heritage foods and stewardship for decades-and in The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center Cookbook, (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015) the OAEC Collective and Olivia Rathbone present a collection of recipes to make the best use of traditional and wild foods in the kitchen.
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