An acorn is just a tree’s way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. – Shirley Ann Grau

A beautiful autumn, one day trading its bloody august sunset for another’s pale yellow and ice-blue.  I gathered armfuls of acorns from the big Northern Red Oak outside our house.  Euell Gibbons in his classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus recommends making an effort to find members of the white oak family, which have less tannin, a substance that makes the acorns bitter and probably unhealthy to eat.  Woe is me — I got lazy and gathered mine off the back porch.

I tasted one raw and regretted it immediately — the tannin gives it an awful, tongue-shriveling quality that reminds me of unripe persimmons.  But everyone online seemed to agree that every acorn is edible if you soak it enough.  Euell says to boil ’em for a few hours, changing the water regularly.  I decided I’d lose too much flavor by boiling, so I crushed them and tried a cold-soak with regular changes of water.  The Native Americans who ate acorns used to put them in a bag and bury them in a bog or creek for months to a year.  I was pretty sure I could do it faster, but weeks later I had learned the hard way that it’s just not worth the effort.  I could have saved so much time if I had invested just a little up front in finding the right tree.  If you happen to have a red oak and are dead set on exploring its bounty, I highly recommend grinding the acorns first before soaking (a nice description of the process is in Debbie Lee’s interesting article on dotorimuk, a savory Korean acorn pudding).

Nonetheless, I finally succeeded in leeching the tannins out.  The nut meats had changed from an ivory hazelnut color to a lovely dark coffee-bean shade, but still retained their earthy hickory-maple aroma.  I roasted them, ground half into acorn meal and kept the rest as nuts.  They make a nice acorn-corn bread, and a delicious acorn-crusted acorn squash (stuffed with acorns, of course).  I’ve also tried a cookie (oakmeal-rasin, of course) and the leftovers went for the above-mentioned dotorimuk.  Recipes available on request!