My tribe grinds acorns into paste, roast the paste, and add it to goat stew. It adds a most delicious fragrance and flavor, sort of the way saffron does.
@@DimensionRunner I do plan on looking for some weeviled acorns this fall, actually. I was planning to see if i could raise the grubs. Also, the grubs are pretty tasty when fried with butter but they do pop like popcorn. They taste better than the acorn itself, so I usually am pretty okay with weeviled acorns :)
This channel is so weird, I hadn’t watched anything even remotely similar to this channel and got this in my recommended, Ive now watched like 10 episodes. Something about it is drug like...
One of these popped up in my recommendations a few months ago. Never seen anything like it. Subbed after watching one video. Had no idea such fruits existed around the world.
because hes showing truths nobody has even thought of beyond whats shown and told. its nice to see this kind of content because learning about things ive never seen before is exciting.
I've eaten a couple as a kid. They most definitely have to be thoroughly blanched to get rid of the tannins otherwise they are horrifically bitter. But they are extremely nutritious and can be relatively palatable if properly prepared.
We have always leeched the tannins from our acorns in cold running water. We leave them in the shell, and change the cold water 3-4 times daily for several days. The result is acorns that aren't bitter at all, no set in tannins either. We then crack them, and remove the dark brown skin. Voila, ready to roast or grind into flour
when I was a kid, there was a kid on the playground who broke open a red oak acorn and ate the orange insides and said it tasted like cheese. it did not taste like cheese...
I remember an episode of Ray Mears' ancient British cooking where he processed acorns by cracking them, putting them in a river to leach the tannins, then ground them and put hot rocks into the paste to cook it. The consistency was like chunky peanut butter, it looked delicious and he claimed it was nutty and hearty if memory serves.
If you manage to grab some cork oak acorns, you'll see how sweet and tasty they are roasted, boiled or milled to flour. Cured ham Pata Negra is made from pigs fed with cork oak acorns
I've heard of an old small species of pig down south that are fed on acorns & have a good flavor as a result? Like to find a place where feral hogs have been eating them and shoot a few for the freezer for the holidays.
My grandma used to make an acorn jello type dish. …it is kind of grayish in color, and you eat it sliced with a seasoned soy sauce based dipping sauce. It is delicious, and my mom doesn’t know how to make it from scratch. You can buy a powder now at the Asian grocery store, but it isn’t nearly as good as grandma’s. Try to get your grandma’s/family recipes written down before it is too late! 😢 Edit: Cool! I wrote this comment before I saw the Korean acorn jelly 🥰😁👍.
This is another one from my childhood,, the Tribe(s) native to this area included acorns as a major part of their diet. As a matter of fact it is fairly common to find grinding rocks- large boulders with holes ground into them where the members of the tribe would grind the acorns into a flour to be leached and further prepared for consumption. We actually have an Acorn festival held in this area for as long as I can remember where the various culinary applications both traditional for the lowly fruit of the Oak. :) Great video, as Always Jared!
It is a pretty fun , but reltively small festival, though it used to be kind of gimmick-y nd cheap, it had in recent years gotten better. The most common way of preparing the acorns after leaching the tannic acid from the ground acorns it was prepared into a kind of bread.
It is, what I can remember of it, it was very similar to quick breads such as spice loaf, but that may just have been how our Teacher at the time prepared it and less to do with actual tradition.
Also if your boiling out the tannin use two pots, the nuts should be placed in water that is already boiling putting them in cold water sets the tannin and makes it more difficult to remove.
+Jared Rydelek I actually watch at least one every night before I go to sleep!! Usually I watch a few. There's a couple I've seen multiple multiple times. You are like infotainment-asmr
You made acorn brittle! Have you tried hickory nuts? Kind of hard to shell, but delicious. One of the best tasting nuts you can get. Not generally available commercially, because they are so hard to shell. The shells are very hard, and the insides more convoluted than black walnut.
Another interesting nut is the beech nut. Raw consumed it can be toxic, if too many are ingested. As a short snack when going for a walk they are great. They can be roasted and increase massively in flavor and lose their toxicity. In post war Germany they were picked not only for their nutrients to live through the famine, but also to make oil out of them. The oil was then used for lamps. I think the taste of beech nuts is better than that of the acorn. As a kid we would regularly eat them (eastern Germany)
You can actually make a stew from trees. White oak acorns that have the tannic acid leached out are dried and crushed, make a tea from pine needles, and use some pine cambium (inner white bark). Mix the pine needle tea with the acorn flour and top off with pieces of cambium and it's nice to clean your palette after a meal, it's nice and nutty and sweet. because cambium has natural sweetness from plant sugars.
Out of every content creator I've started watching during the quarantine, this guy has held my attention the most-- hope he continues making content and gets loads more viewers!
When I was 8 years old me and a couple of friends picked up an acorn from someone's lawn. Grabbed a Rock and bashed the shit out of it. We each took a piece of the yellowish meat inside and chewed. I was the first one to speak and I said.... If I die my mother will kill me! It was so bad all three of us thought that we were poisoned and in danger of imminent death! Hahaha!
@@nathanchalecki4842 Indeed. Just about every Tom, Dick and Howard knows that olives have to be cured before they’re eaten. The curing process gets rid of the bitter substances within the fruit and turns the olive fruits into the zesty, savory delicacies we know and love
If you ever come across a good pine cone you should remove the pine nut from them :) it's surprisingly easy. You get a thicc pine cone and smash it on a rock and the pine nuts come out. You can find the tutorials on RU-vid lol.
Toast it well above a fire, and the pine nuts will just shake out. Many trees have tactics to set seeds after after a forest fire, especially pine trees (redwood can't germinate without fire)
I've had acorn jelly. It didn't really have much flavor, and what flavor it did have was slightly unpleasant. It was packaged with dipping sauces, such that when eaten as intended, one pretty much only tastes the dipping sauce, with the acorn jelly being a purely textural/nutritive element. I believe the dish is simply a relic from an era when people in that area did not have much in the way of available food, but had an abundance of acorns, and so processed those acorns into a form that could provide some nutrition to keep them from starving. I imagine it survives to the present day primarily on tradition rather than merits of the dish itself.
If you think of acorn jelly dishes (there's also a version where the jelly pieces are tossed and coated in dried seaweed sheet flakes, sesame seed oil, salt, sugar, and sesame seeds - tastes very good btw) as similar to say, salads, then I think that gives a better idea of the jelly. Most lettuce leaves, spinach and cucumbers aren't really that "tasty" eaten just as a bowl of greens with no salad dressing or dipping sauce or seasoning, right? But if you toss them in a tasty seasoning - then you have a tasty and nutritious dish. Or perhaps a better comparison is cooked rice, which is also rather plain on its own, but provides high calories like the acorn jelly. All you need to do is add seasonings, toppings etc. for a tasty, filling and nutritious meal. I think the reason for using acorns is the abundance of them in a country with many, many mountains, where people could just collect them from mountainsides (which weren't good farming land so they were left wild) which were everywhere around them. Acorns have a lot of calories as well as nutrients, so in the past, they would have definitely been a good food supplement, collected in the fall and eaten in the colder months.
@@WeirdExplorer Bondaegi smells truly awful. I don't know about the taste. I am guessing it came about as a byproduct of the silkworm/silk industry, as a fairly cheap animal protein. It isn't popular at all nowadays whereas the acorn jelly is still very popular. Also, unlike bondaegi acorn jelly does not smell at all, and is vegan. I would say it has hardly any taste, or maybe a very faint bitter taste. However the acorn jelly seasoned dishes are very tasty, vegan friendly, and not at all an acquired taste.
@@SY-ok2dq The bondaegi that comes canned has a woody, earthy taste, with the texture of extra soft wood. If you did not look at what you were eating you'd have no idea it was a bug (I did not know I was eating bugs until I was about 5 years old when I noticed the legs) There is the slightest crunch but due to its canned nature it is overall kinda mushy. That's all I have to say. I haven't eaten one since I was 5. So inaccuracies in my description may exist.
@@bigtimbolim Don't the worms feed on mulberry leaves? Do they eat the twigs too (giving them that woody taste)? The cooked bugs sold fresh at stalls in some holiday areas etc. in those big steaming vats, smell horrible. Maybe canned ones smell less. I wonder if it's because they are cooked whole, with their guts and heads. Or perhaps boiling makes the smell worse. They kind of remind me of small brown cockroaches up close, which along with the overpowering smell, is enough to make you lose your appetite.
It’s best to avoid the red oak acorn altogether. They are two year acorns, which is why they have much more tannin. To tell the difference between red and white oak, look at the leaves. White oak has lobed leaves, red oak has points on the leaves. The longer you soak them and the more you change the water, the better they will taste.
"Not that bitter... GAAK!" One Native American strategy for leaching was to put the acorns in a sturdy woven baskets and weight them down in a running stream for... a period of time. I used several changes of boiling water and then dried them in the oven. Then into the old fashioned coffee grinder, then into the blender. Very tough on the blender. I finally got some flour. Mixed with buckwheat it made delicious pancakes! And well roasted pieces made a very nice hot beverage. All the work involved is not worth it for everyday food, but if you want to feel self sufficient it is a good skill to have. Picking the shell off will hurt your fingers, I recommend smashing them, neatness doesn't count here!
Yes!! I remember the runaway boy living in a hollowed out tree in the Adirondacks and making flour from acorns. He didn’t tell us that he processed them in any way so when I ate one it was bitter. He also tanned hides in a water filled oak stump. At 63 I still remember that book from my childhood.
We use the acorn mash that deer hunters use to get deer to the stands to fatten out market hogs for our dinner table along with corn, soy, whey or milk and veggies waste. Makes a good pork carcass.
@@lucaschneider9515 He used to have the Cannibal Holocaust theme for awhile (not the same as in this video), so it's possible that its another horror movie theme/song
Acorn is the contraction of oak + corn. The word corn was used to describe any grain and even material in small pieces, such as the salt chunks used to make 'corned beef'.
I watched a video by the hacksmith where they collected acorns for planting or something and the squirrels got their revenge and ate their power supply to the entire building. Do NOT take a squirrel’s food. 😂
I am loving your videos. In fact, i may have set some sort of weird fruit explorer watching record. I came across your videos three days ago and have probably watched between 6-8 hours of your videos in that time. Pretty much my total media consumption. Lol... anyway thanks for what you are doing.
Acorns of any variety can be eaten as long as you leach out the tannins first, but large acorns are definitely best just due to the labor involved with shelling all those acorns. I have made acorn flour several times and the best way I've found to leach tannins is to make a smoothie out of acorn meats and water (just throw them in a blender). Let the acorn grits settle in the fridge, pour off the water and replace it with fresh water, and then repeat daily for a week or two until the slurry is relatively tasteless. Press out the water, dry in a low oven or food dehydrator, and then use like chestnut flour. Fantastic for cakes, cookies, and roux (for stews, as previously mentioned).
lightly peoccessed acorns by boiling husked acorns is a good addition to chestnut for stuffing at thanksgiving. also good with pecans and wallnuts stuffing with raisinns and cranberries,
Burr Oak purportedly is the sweetest with the least tannins. I live in a region that predominantly oak, but the Burr Oak is not common here. I know of one such tree in our region, but it's about a 35 mile drive from where I live in Arkansas.
도토리 묵 (acorn muk) is Korean food that is made out of 100% acorn power. You should try this. You can get this powered from Korean store and mixed with water and let it set, than cut it into bite size... Acorn Muk, mostly, does not have flavor, so you need to use some kinds of sauce of your liking.. How they make acorn power is by cracking, let it sit in water for 4-5days (during this time change water 2-3 x a day), let it dry, than make a power out of it.
I was told by a person who knows trees very well and he cringed when I mentioned doing anything with white oak. He said that black oak was the best one to use medicanally at least, im not sure if that also applies to the acorns I imagine it "wood" ha but if you come across a black oak that may be and interesting part 2 to this vid. Love your stuff I do learn alot!
While nuts are fruit, acorns are true nuts. As well as hazelnuts, chestnuts and betelnut. Almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios are all the pits of drupes Others like peanuts and brazil nuts are just seeds of fruit.
Acorns are bitter, you have to powder them and then boil or soak the bitterness out of them. Another way to get rid of tannins is to put some egg white in the water when you boil them, and the egg soaks up the tannins. You need to press all the water out, and make a cake out of the pulp. We have butternuts where I live, although a fungus has decimated their numbers, they taste much better.
Quarcus arizonia white oaks can be consumed quite a bit with no real negitive effects also can be eaten right after they fall of the tree they are very small and almost no bitterness wasp larve found in them are also eaten and taste like what some say is butter. Maybe try these ?
In northern Thailand one can find Acorns for sale roasted,at the country markets. There tiny. I'm not sure about the whole process,there's some conflicting info;the lady at the market told my gal that she doesn't boil them before roasting them but my gal's sister tried just roasting them and it didn't work. Either way,they're still in their shells. They're roasted until the shell is almost charred and breaks open. The heat seems to have converted the starch to sugars,they're really sweet. So good! I could eat a Kilo of them. They're called Bakgaw (low a). One will see them being roasted in big Woks and can buy bags of them still warm.
In south Korea, we make a kind of 'jelly' with starch of acorn. it's called '도토리묵(Dotori-mook; Dotori=Acorn)', and it tastes interesting. I prefer add some soy sauce.
Awesome. How about '참외(Chamwae)'? It's kind of melon, but it has crunchy nuance.(and also it has yellow color). I am your fan from Korea. I hope you find the ultimate fruit.
It looks like when you prepare pinhão, the seed of Araucária tree, commonly eaten in southern Brazil. But you usually cook them whole and then open them, usually with your mouth, and you usually not candy them, you eat them salty, althought candied pinhão looks like a good idea.
As a kid born and raised in So. California I always assumed acorns were just things invented for cartoons. Wasn’t until just recently that I learned that not only were they real but they were commonly eaten in some parts of the country. Interested in trying these one day hopefully.
It is extremely rare, but it does happen to some Quercus infectoria trees, one out of hundreds, to have sweet acorns, tastier even than chestnuts here in my island.
Pecan and chestnut sounds really good actually. I could see cooking that into something. Basically you’ve made acorn praline. I grew up surrounded by oaks; why did I never try this?
I see survivalist grinding them up, putting the flour in a sock, leaving it in a river for a day or 2 then making a pattie out of it and roasting it on a hot rock by the fireplace
I want to tell you how to peel the husk from oak. First, take approximately a kilo or less of oak on a large pot, I mean a large wall, and leave it on the fire after filling it with water and leave it for about half an hour or less. After that, you peel the husk with your hand. Then you see the husk cleaned by the oak fruit. I mean there is a crust on its fruits. It separates and sticks to the 4 with the strong main peel, then you eat the oak free of the double peel, I mean, I mean it is ready to eat, please try this. You do not need to leave the fire because it usually explodes and burns. I mean you pour a quantity of water on large walls and fill the walls with a small amount of oak and leave it on the fire for about half an hour as needed and after that you see the oak fruit peeled and clean. You just have to cut the oak and eat the fruit. After this process you can cut it with juicer or something else or You make flour from it, and you use it as bread. In this way, the oak does not explode, is not burnt, or is not strong. It is soft to eat.
