Acorns as food!

Several years ago,  we (Elyse, Abby and I) took a class down at the White Pine School in York on Acorns as a food source.  Apparently, some native american tribes considered acorns to be a staple food, and at least in some years, they are so abundant that in those times, the only excuse for going hungry might be a lack of knowledge of how to utilize them.  They do naturally have tannic acid in them that needs to be removed before they can be eaten.  There are two ways to do this: the hot leach method, and the cold leach method. The White Pine School class we took focused on the hot leach method which entails repeated boiling and water changes, but it ends up using a huge amount of energy to do it and it cooks the acorns, and winds up removing some of the nutritional value  in the leaching process. I tried this method a couple times, but found it changes the taste, as well.  This year, I have done a couple of batches using the cold leach, and found that it is less labor intensive, uses very little energy - just enough to run a blender or food processor (and the human power to shell the acorns - that was a fun project for the girls on a snow day or two!), and should preserve more of the nutritional value of the Acorns.
Here are a couple videos on the cold leach process:
An Acorn Video by Arthur Haines, A maine based botanist and wild foods expert

And another that I found online


This video shows the technique I have been using lately.