Nutritious Acorns Don't Have To Just Be Snacks For Squirrels
These days, Americans are all about eating local foods. But one important local crop drops to the ground mostly unnoticed every fall. Well, unless you're a squirrel. Yes, we're talking about acorns.
Although acorns don't get the love that hazelnuts and walnuts enjoy, this wasn't always the case. Bill Logan is an arborist in New York, who traced the history of eating acorns for his book Oak: The Frame of Civilization.
"There's a lot of references in ancient Greek literature to acorn," Logan recounts. "There's some suggestion that at some of the earliest central settlements, there are unexplained pits which may have been for storage of acorn." Logan also notes that in Tunisian, the word for oak means the "meal-bearing" tree.
And it makes sense that the history of acorn-eating spans the globe. Because oak trees are almost everywhere: "all through North America, down into South America," notes Logan. "Then across the way into Europe, from temperate Russia and south. And then you go on out into China, and then out into Southeast Asia."
But despite this wide geographic range and long culinary history, these days very few people eat acorns. Beyond the occasional enthusiastic forager, widespread consumption is pretty much limited to Korean cuisine (which favors an acorn jelly), and several Native American tribes. That's because while acorns do have a lot of good qualities — fats, protein and minerals — they also have some drawbacks, namely, tannins.
John Kallas, director of Wild Food Adventures, leads a class on making acorn pudding at his home in Portland, Ore. He shows students how to shell, grind, process and leach acorns to get a subtly flavored flour.
If you've ever tried a raw acorn, and quickly spat it out, that's probably due to tannins. These compounds give raw acorns an astringent, puckery quality (they can also do some damage to your kidneys as well). But, as people have learned throughout history, tannins can be removed.
Students grind shelled acorns for a class on making acorn pudding led by John Kallas, in Portland, Ore.
In Portland, Ore., wild food expert John Kallas teaches workshops on how to process acorns. Luckily the tannins are water-soluble, so you can leach them out with a few changes of water.
But you've also got to crack the shells (bricks, rocks and hammers were employed at the workshop), pick out the nut meats, weed out the bad ones and grind the nuts into meal. (At Kallas' workshop, that resulted in breaking one of the heavy metal grinder plates.) You've also got to dry the meats properly, as they have a tendency to grow mold quickly. All in all, not a terribly convenient food.
And after all that work, what are you left with? A very subtly flavored flour. Much like other starches, making acorns delicious is all about what you do with them — and what you top them with.
Kallas adds vanilla to acorns to make acorn pudding.
Frank Lake comes from the Yurok and Karuk tribes of California. His traditional acorn preparation is a simple soup, cooked with hot stones directly in a basket. But whether it's soup or flatbreads, baked or stovetop, it all comes down to what you pair it with.
"For me, growing up eating acorns, it was always what you added to it," like grilled salmon, huckleberries or seaweed, says Lake.
Lake is a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, working with the tribes on their acorn forests — or, as Lake likes to call them, orchards.
"We try to gather acorns and have them as part of our diet as much as we can," Lake explains. "But because of the changes in forest management, and particularly acorn quality, it went from being a staple, to then being more of a speciality food."
Lake says tribal oak orchards have shrunk due to a few factors: losing land, not burning off enough of the undergrowth to clear out pests that can destroy acorns (namely a pesky weevil) and favoring fast-growing timber trees over slow-growing oak.
But there are many places where oaks are thriving — or they've actually been planted, because of their nice picnic-friendly canopies. And there, Lake says, acorns can be great untapped resource.
There are a few businesses starting to explore this commercially, making acorn flour crackers. But for the most part, the acorn market is still the realm of backyard enthusiasts who are willing to undergo the collecting, grinding, leaching, drying and baking on their own. Which means there should be plenty of nuts left for the squirrels.
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Transcript
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Our next story is about eating locally. You know the whole farm-to-table phenomenon, except this is more like tree to table. We're talking about acorns. Yes, there are people in Portland, Oregon who are making the effort, and it is an effort, to make acorns a regular part of their diet. Here's Deena Prichep to explain why.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: At Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon, the trees are just starting to turn fall colors. But the acorns are already dropping everywhere.
JOHN KALLAS: I mean, just with one grab, I can get two handfuls of acorns.
PRICHEP: John Kallas is a wild food expert who teaches classes on eating acorns.
KALLAS: So they sort of store up the energy. And some produce every two years; some produce every three years.
PRICHEP: Even with that variability, Kallas is able to fill up his bucket in a few minutes, which raises the question - why is he the only one out here? Acorns have protein, carbohydrates, fats and minerals; all the good stuff. But they also have something else - tannins.
PIXIE LAPLANTE: I'll tell you what, an acorn out of the shell is ugh.
PRICHEP: Tannins, as Pixie LaPlante is discovering, make fresh acorns pucker-y in a very unpleasant way. At John Kallas's acorn workshop, LaPlante and others are learning how to process them. First, there's the shelling. Then you've got to grind them up.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: It's a workout.
PRICHEP: Then get rid of those tannins by leaching them out with water. It does take effort. But it's an effort people have made throughout history.
BILL LOGAN: There's a lot of references in ancient Greek literature to acorns. There's some suggestion that in some of the earliest central settlements, there are unexplained pits, which may have been for storage of acorn.
PRICHEP: Bill Logan is an arborist in New York. He traced the history of eating acorns for his book about oak trees. And oak trees are almost anywhere.
LOGAN: All through North America, down into South America, then across the way into Europe and into temperate Russia and south. And then you go on out into China and then out into Southeast Asia.
PRICHEP: But Logan says even though they're so widespread, there's a good reason you're not eating acorns.
LOGAN: I found the taste somewhat insipid.
FRANK LAKE: For me, growing up eating acorns, it was always what you added to it. If it was nice, grilled salmon, if it was huckleberries, if it's a little bit of seaweed.
PRICHEP: Frank Lake comes from the Yurok and Karuk tribes. Native Americans are among the few who still eat acorns. For California tribes, the ground meal is usually made into a simple soup or flatbreads.
LAKE: But because of the changes in forest management and poor acorn quality, it went from being a staple to then being more of kind of a specialty food.
PRICHEP: Lake, who is also a research ecologist with the Forest Service, says the drop in tribal oak orchards is due to a few factors - losing land, not burning off enough of the undergrowth to clear out pests and favoring fast-growing timber trees over a slow-growing oak.
LAKE: I mean, you want to talk about a slow food movement, adopt acorns as a main food source.
PRICHEP: There are many places where oaks are thriving or they've actually been planted because of their nice, picnic-friendly canopies. And there, Lake says, acorns can be a great, untapped resource as long as you leave some for the squirrels. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep in Portland, Oregon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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