Another question: What about sprouted or ready to sprout acorns? Can you process and consume them too? Theoretically they should have less phytic acid then just dried ones and probably much less tanin as well (should be leached away already while the acorn sat in a wet media absorbing water before sprouting).
Very informative, but lacks the final part - examples of how to use the acorn flour. Use it as nuts substitute? As additive to food to make it more nutritious? Making pancakes?
Watching from Belgium. So grateful to be able to watch you and hearing you talking so very important knowledge of all kind regarding to nature. Thank you sir.❤
You can also re-simmer chaga several times for tea (long decoction), until it’s lost it’s flavor, or make a dual extraction to further stretch the medicine.
I am new to harvesting acorns and am looking for advice from those who have been there and done that. Floated a batch of brown live oak acorns and dried them then put them in the freezer for a couple of days in hopes of loosening the skin around the meat. Shelled a small batch that had cracked open upon freezing and most were looking good. The rest, I put in a dehydrator over night to see if drying them out on low will work. What I ended up is most of the meat turned med to dark brown while still shelled. I am assuming that the meat is ruined? Also, for those that grind and leach acorns right after shelling, how do you remove the skins? Do they become part of the processes acorn flour? Thanks
Classic acorn education video. Thank you, Arthur. This video had a significant impact while I was developing my own method/s for processing acorns. All acorns are at least slightly different in how they behave throughout the process - from gathering and drying to final leaching. Nearly all instructional videos or articles have a degree of misinformation in them, mostly a great deal. This is because locally-based (if not "book") knowledge is assumed to be absolute when it is always relative to your locale. For example, one correction I would offer to what Arthur offers here is that the Emory oak acorns (Quercus emoryi), aka "bellotas" of the northern Sonoran desert (and northwestern Chihuahuan desert), are traditionally eaten, TO THIS DAY, by Sonoran desert dwellers such as Mexicans and Apaches WITHOUT ANY LEACHING WHATSOEVER. None. This is because the tannins are so low, although still present. These acorns form a cornerstone of Apache culture, both material and spiritual. Thank you for your tremendous offering!
Amazing details about the acorns. Would adding a small amount of salt to the flour before drying help preserve the flour itself for longer storage ? Can flour be frozen ?
Flour can be frozen, and it is helpful to keep it longer (it slows down the oxidation of the fats). However, acorns just store best whole and processed as needed (to keep surface area to a minimum and reduce oxidation of the lipids within the acorn kernel). Salt likely wouldn't help much with this. I get about three years with black oak group acorns (e.g., northern red oak, black oak). You can get longer with white oak group acorns (e.g., eastern white oak, burr oak, mountain chestnut oak). Again, those periods of storage are for whole acorns in shell (dried). Best wishes.
@@neoaboriginalis Thankyou for your help about acorns. I store black walnuts and they get about the same shelf life 3 years give or take. Good to know the acorns can do the same in shell. A future project now for sure on my bucket list. Again thanks.
Very well done video. I have close to fifty pounds of acorns drying in my garage as I type this. I would add one thing. I notiiced that when you spoke of acorn use in California by Native people, you use the past tense. However, I am happy to say the people are still there, using acorn and carrying on with their cultural practices.
Very well explained I was just about to try processing black walnuts this year. Think I’ll take a stroll through the park and see if I can find some acorns. I usually just grab them from the shop I work at and feed them to the chipmunks at home. I’m now given some motivation to try something new
According to the IUCN foraging puts a lot of pressure on native plants even leading to their extinctions. Please collect from invasive species and give them predatory pressure they don't have from their own native ecologies which gives them IMMENSE advantages over native species in terms of having extra energy for colonizing, creating biochemistry to steal pollinators from their co-evolved plants, and producing bigger plants because of lack of folivore pressure. Our evolved ecology is disappearing quickly, and foragers can help steward our native plants which are food for insects, birds, and other animals. Thank you.
The quality of this video, and more accurately of this teaching, is exceptional. Huge congratulations, and huge thanks for making it. I admire the time and dedication that this video must have taken. Thank you!
Yeah,they are grains as a survival food when meat wad unavailable. Yet this guy does it by choice. Nothing wrong with some starch from time to time but it's not exactly "healthy". Fruit is better
Thanks for this in depth talk about eating acorns - great information. In future videos, though, please muffle the mic. The wind makes it hard to understand you.
Thanks again Arthur, I haven't watched this video in probably five or maybe 7 or 8 years. I now live in a place where I'm surrounded by large oak trees and I couldn't remember any of these details. I'm going to go out and see what I can scrounge up for good acorns. I remember trying some acorn flour cookies back when we looked at this first. I have never forgotten how delicious they were and every time I see an oak tree I think about those cookies. I'm no longer eating sugar so maybe I'll make a bread or something this time. But very much looking forward to it. I have one of your books, the first volume and I still have to get the second volume but for those who don't know Arthur's books are invaluable tools. Thanks again, Arthur!
Thank you! I live in a large white oak grove. I think I'll try this sometime. Right now, I'm watching the woodpeckers and squirrels collect all the acorns. I believe the Natives just tied them into a bag and hung them in the river to leech them.
