Sunday, February 22, 2009

Processing acorns

Processing Acorns:

Step 1: After spending hours of splitting the nuts with your pocket knife and checking for bad spots and grubs, put them in the blender and blend them on low speed until they are nice and chunky.

Step 2: Pour nuts through strainer and rinse them.

Step 3: Boil nuts in a pot with more water for 15 minutes and remove foam from the top. Drain and rinse again then taste them. If they do not taste good then boil them for 15 minutes again in water and remove foam from the top. Repeat this step until they meet the needs of your taste buds. Well, we only did it one or two times so it's not recommended to do it more than that.

Step 4: Eat them, if you do not want to eat them all at once then bag them and put them in the freezer. If you do not like eating them all by themselves then bake them in cookies, banana bread, or pancakes.

Step 5: If you do not like them at all then you have a nice bit of bird feeder. If they do not like them then just throw it to the squirrels. If they do not like them then... oh well.

2 comments:

Sara said...

Thanks, Alan!

I would just add that when you put them in the blender, make sure to cover them with water, too. And the nut/shell ratio is surprisingly good compared to other nuts. As you indicated, the shells are soft and the acorns can be sliced in half with a pocket knife or paring knife. We occasionally found a grub, and our chickens were very happy about that! Virginia wanted to keep some grubs in a container and pretend that they were babies. She even put an acorn shell in there for a cradle. Of course, we let them go when she was done mothering them, much to their relief!

Sara said...

Here is a link to more info about acorns!

http://tinyurl.com/bvwzo8