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5 Ways To Eat Acorns for Survival

Acorns are a handy survival food, and can be used for medicinal purposes.
BY TIM MACWELCH | PUBLISHED OCT 8, 2019 9:15 PM

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Green acorns, ready for processing Tim MacWelch

“I didnʼt know you could eat acorns!” It pains me to hear this phrase, and I hear it o en. It seems that
the average person has no idea they are crushing a valuable wild edibles underfoot. Many areas
with oak trees are loaded with acorns this year, so itʼs proving to be a great year to harvest this
wholesome native food.

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But what are you supposed to do with them? Hereʼs an easy method for processing them, and ve
di erent ways to eat this humble and ubiquitous tree nut.

Processing acorns starts out by shelling of the nuts and leaching out the tannins that make them bitter
and nauseating. You could crack them one by one with pliers or smash them individually with a rock, but
the native folks of this land gured out a much better technique: mass breakage.

Simply set out 20-30 acorns on a hard at surface and smash them all at once with a wide heavy object.
Use a sidewalk and a cinderblock in urban environments. Use two big at rocks in your back yard or in
the wild. Whichever “tools” you have at your disposal, you can smash the nuts open in one or two strokes
and save yourself a lot of time.

Next, separate out all the shell fragments and place the nut meat pieces in pot of warm water. Soak them
in warm water for a few hours, then pour o the water. Do a taste test. If the acorns are still too bitter,
soak them in warm water for a few more hours. This water bath leaches out the tannic acid, which causes
nausea and digestive distress when consumed. Repeat this until they are palatable. For ideas on what to
do with the le over tannic acid, click here.

You could also do a leaching process in moving water with a cloth bag. Clean socks or pillow cases are
great, if you have them. Tightly woven baskets are the traditional method of straining them. Immerse the
nuts in a running stream and secure them so they donʼt wash away. Let the water ow through them for a
few days, and youʼre ready to move to the next step.

Once the acorns are properly leached, they can be dried a bit to grind into our, or used while the chunks
are still damp.

1. Roasted Acorns
One of the easiest ways to cook acorns is to roast them. Place the damp nut chunks on a baking sheet and
sprinkle with ne salt. Toast them for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees in a pre-heated oven, or roll them
around in a dry frying pan over the camp re. You can tell theyʼre done when the color has changed a
little, and the nut pieces smell like roasted nuts. Eat them out of hand just like peanuts.

2. Acorn Brittle

For those with a sweet tooth, follow your favorite peanut brittle recipe, and substitute acorns for the
peanuts. Use the same volume of acorns that the recipe asks for in peanuts, or add a few more acorns to
make this snack a little more nutritious. Once the brittle is cooled, break it into pieces and enjoy.

3. Acorn Bread
Dry your leached acorns a little bit. When they are halfway between wet and so , and dry and rock-hard,
run them through a blender, food processor, grain mill, or grind between two rocks. Dry the resulting
acorn meal in a low temp oven for a few minutes, or air dry for a few hours. Then grind it again. This
acorn our can be used to bake breads or almost any other baked good. If youʼre expecting so spongy
bread, blend in some wheat our for its gluten. It you donʼt mind the acornʼs natural crumbly texture, use
the acorn our as-is.

4. Acorn Cookies
Using the our described above, try your hand at cookies. You could follow any cookie recipe, swapping
out the wheat our for acorn our. Since acorn our is more crumbly than wheat our, cookies are a
natural t for this wild food. My favorite are acorn peanut butter cookies. Hereʼs how to make them:

Ingredients

3 cups of acorn our

½ teaspoon of baking soda
½ teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 cup of white sugar
1 cup of butter
1 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of peanut butter

The butter will cooperate better if it so ens up to room temperature before mixing, so set the butter out
rst. Mix the our, salt and baking soda in a small bowl, and set it aside. Mix the so ened butter and
peanut butter in a large bowl. Add the vanilla and both sugars to the butter mixture, and mix it well. Add
the eggs and mix again. Stir the our mixture into the butter mixture until smooth. Roll the dough into
balls and pat out onto an ungreased baking pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes or until lightly brown.
Makes 4 to 5 dozen cookies.

5. Acorn Co ee
This may not seem right to diehard java drinkers since thereʼs no ca eine in an acorn, but you can roast a
co ee substitute from acorns that is pleasant enough to drink. Place chunks of leached acorn on a cookie
sheet and roast them in the oven at 400F for about 30 minutes. This roasting time will depend on the
moisture in the nut pieces (more moist acorns need more time). Trust your eyes and nose when making
acorn co ee, and stay right next to the oven. When the pieces are dark brown and give o a roasted (but
not a burned) smell, they are done. Add one tablespoon of roasted acorn to one eight ounce cup of boiling
water. Steep for 5-10 minutes, reheat if necessary. Add your normal co ee additives, or drink it “black.”

What do you make from acorns? Let us know you use them by leaving a comment.

A cracked acorn, in its shell Tim MacWelch

How to Prepare Acorns for Food and Medicinal Uses

Acorns represent one of the biggest (and most widespread) calorie jackpots in the annual wild plant food
harvest, if you can beat the squirrels to them. These high calorie nuts were a staple crop to many of our
ancestors around the Northern Hemisphere and we can still rely on them for food today. Coming in at
2,000 calories per pound, this abundant of a food crop is too valuable to ignore. You can even use them to
make medicine. Hereʼs how.

Acorns for Food

To prepare palatable acorns, crack them out of their shell and break any large pieces into “pea-sized”
chunks. Then soak these acorn chunks in cold, warm, or even hot water to remove the bitter and
irritating tannic acid. Note that some books instruct us to boil acorns, but this locks in some of the
bitterness. Youʼll have the best results with warm water.

Soak the acorns for a few hours. If the water was safe to drink, taste a piece of acorn to see if it is still
bitter. If you donʼt like it, dump o the water (which should be brown, like tea), add fresh warm water, and
soak the acorn pieces again for a few hours. Repeat this a time or two, or three depending on the acornʼs
bitterness. Once they taste okay (in other words, bland), let them dry out for a few hours. Then you can
run them through a grain grinder, our mill, or use the classic mortar and pestle to make acorn our. Add
this our to existing recipes; or try your hand at making acorn porridge, cookies, crackers, or biscuits.

Acorns for Medicine

Remember the brown tea-like water you poured o the rst soaking of acorns? Well, donʼt throw it out
just yet. Even though it seems like weʼre brewing up some kind of medieval potion, crushed acorns and
hot water can provide a great remedy for in amed and irritated skin, as well as toothaches. You can use
the rst water you pour o from the process of soaking described above. Or you can make a liquid thatʼs
more concentrated by boiling crushed acorns (shells and all) in a pot of water. A handful of crushed
acorns in one pint of water will make a small batch of strong medicinal uid. Soak a clean cloth in this
dark brown water, and apply the wet cloth to rashes, ingrown toenails, hemorrhoids, and any other
in amed skin ailment. Leave the cloth in place, and repeat this treatment as needed. For tooth troubles,
simply swish the bitter water in your mouth, holding it in there as long as you can. Repeat as need, but do
not swallow, as this acidic water will give you an upset stomach.

Ever try to eat acorns without leeching the bitterness? Or perhaps used them as a our or animal feed?
Please tell us about your experience in the comments.

11 Things You Never Knew About the Incredible, Edible

Acorn

Deer and hunters alike o en nd themselves at the mercy of this modest nut. A poor acorn year can spell
disaster for a herd headed into a hard winter, just as a bumper crop can ruin even the best hunt plan.
Hereʼs everything you never knew about the hard mast that packs a real punch.

450-600
Number of oak species that exist worldwide (depending on how theyʼre classi ed)

60
Approximate number of oak species in the U.S.

5.5
Pounds of food a deer consumes per day, on average

55%
Portion of a whitetailʼs fall diet that consists of mast like acorns

74%
Acorns a gray squirrel may hide but never recover

Protein should make up 16% of a buckʼs diet for its antlers to reach maximum growth

>10,000
Number of acorns a single oak tree can drop in a good year

6 months
Time it takes acorns from the white oak family to mature

18 months
Time it takes acorns from the red oak family to mature

One Pennsylvania study measured how many acorns a stand of red oaks could produce. In a poor seed
year researchers tallied just 7,000 acorns per acre. but during a bumper year, they recorded 273,000.
Thatʼs a lot of nuts.

NUTRITION FACTS
(SERVING SIZE: 1 oz.)
110 calories
7 grams fat
12 grams carbohydrates
1.7 grams protein

2019_SEO FORAGING SURVIVAL TIM MACWELCH WILD GAME RECIPES

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