While foragers harvest mushrooms, nettles and berries, the humble acorn has long been ignored, in the UK at least. That could all be about to change. The Wall Street Journal reports that in South Korea, acorns have achieved “superfood” status, with people devouring “acorn noodles, jelly and powder”. And, last month, the Woodland Trust in the UK published a piece on its website about acorns and how to eat them.
We’re catching on late. Native Americans relied on acorns – rich in nutrients – as a staple part of their diet. They are farmed in China and South Korea, and often ground into flour. Many cultures make acorn “coffee”. They are rich in protein, fats, fibre and essential minerals.
“My life revolves around acorns,” said Marcie Mayer in a recent Tedx Talk about the nuts. Mayer, who lives on a farm on a Greek island, produces cookies made from acorn flour. She pointed out that protecting oak trees, and planting more, could help tackle the climate crisis and that acorns are good for food security because they can be stored, squirrel-like, long-term.
“Now is the perfect season,” says the forager Fergus Drennan, who is running an acorn-foraging course this weekend. “You might think to head off to the woods, but I go to parks, gardens and golf courses in particular.” The acorns fall on to clean, short grass, which makes them easier to collect than rooting through leaf litter.
Getting them ready to eat, “takes a little bit of work. You need to shell them first. If you’re working small-scale, you could just slit them with a knife and pop them out of their shell.” With bigger harvests (remembering to leave enough for wildlife), Drennan likes to dry them – you can do it on a radiator or spread out in a warm room – before sandwiching them between two sheets and getting some friends round to dance and stamp on them.
Then you should leach them to get the bitter tannins out. Drennan says he puts them in a porous sack and sticks them in a toilet cistern. “That can take between two and six weeks, as the quantity of tannin can be variable. Don’t mix batches from different trees, even if they’re the same variety because they can have different tannin levels.”
Then they can be roasted, or ground for coffee or flour. “Last year, I made an acorn chocolate cake, which I loved. More commonly, I put it in bread, and I like to make tagliatelle with it.” They taste, he says, “nutty, a bit earthy. There’s a kind of density to it.”
