Once thawed, the pre-cooked, pre-frozen acorn meal is excellent to make sandwiches with, use in dips or whatever your imagination can dream up. Sometimes it’s hard to find new cooking ideas, but acorn dishes never fail to delight guests. A bowl of acorn dip brings smiles, and a lot of interesting conversation.
Suellen Ocean is the author of Acorns and Eat’em, a how-to vegetarian cookbook and field guide for eating acorns:
I usually shell the acorns soon after I’ve gathered them, and fill plastic sandwich bags and put them in the freezer, to leach later. I have two ways of using leached acorns. I either add them to a recipe that needs cooking, or I simmer the thoroughly leached acorns in water for about fifteen minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly, (they can stick to the pan and burn). After they cool, I freeze this water and meal. The freezing separates the mush from the water. Freezing in two-cup size portions, after thawing, (don’t thaw out in the microwave or using heat, you’ll get porridge,) I like to turn them into a kitchen strainer. You can also just squeeze the water out of the thawed acorns, and you now have a fabulous food to cook with.
Suellen Ocean is the author of Acorns and Eat’em, a how-to vegetarian cookbook and field guide for eating acorns:
In a way, acorns remind me of tofu. They’re a vegetable protein and they need to be ground and prepared using lots of water. The mass of ground acorns looks similar to raw blended soybeans. I found preparing acorns much easier than making tofu. I also put a little note on the refrigerator that reminds me what day I leached the acorns.
Suellen Ocean is the author of Acorns and Eat’em, a how-to vegetarian cookbook and field guide for eating acorns:
Acorns can be leached in a shorter period by other methods, like constant water running through them, but I like to leach them in the refrigerator for at least a week. Leaching large quantities in big bowls or buckets is fine too, but difficult to keep refrigerated.
Suellen Ocean is the author of Acorns and Eat’em, a how-to vegetarian cookbook and field guide for eating acorns:
suellenocean 