I know, where are the acorns?
I couldn’t find my pictures of acorns, so these nuts will have to do.
Acorns from different oaks ripen at different times of the year. Oaks can vary on the time they take to ripen acorns – from 6 to 24 months, which is why some trees have prolific acorns one year and virtually none the next. White oak acorns are sweeter and lower in tannin than red oak acorns. Some don’t drop until after a hard freeze and lots of rain, others fall before the leaves do. Some are best gathered in the spring and others in the fall. If you wait until the acorn is just sprouting, it has fewer tannins and is sweeter than if you gather them right after they drop. Of course, you have to contend with squirrels and other creatures gathering them firs if you wait too long.
Once you gather the acorns, shell them and put the nutmeats into a plastic bag and freeze them until you have enough to start processing them. You can also roast the nuts before shelling them, which can make the shelling easier. Spread the acorns in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast at 250ºF for half an hour. You’ll need to process them within a few days because they are high in oils and will start rotting. This isn’t a full on roast, because you still have to leach the nutmeats, this is just enough roast to kill any larva egg inside the nutmeats and to provide a little preservation if you plan to collect and process a lot more nuts than a single day’s harvest.
Shelling can be time-consuming. If you intend to harvest lots of nuts (acorns, pecans, walnut, hazelnuts, and other soft shelled nuts, invest in a good quality nut sheller like Davebuilt Nutcracker (http://www.ehcan.com/Nutcracker.html) . It costs about $150, but it’s so worth it. You can crack pounds of nuts in minutes. Pre-roasting the nuts will make the shells brittle so they crack easier.
If you don’t have a good quality cracker, then you can put a 3” layer of acorns in the bottom of a large, heavy bucket or wooden bowl and pound them with a pestle. Pound lightly, just enough to crack the shells, but not enough to pulverize the nutmeats. Put a piece of ½” hardware cloth over the top of another bucket or bowl and pour the cracked nuts over the screen, forcing the nutmeats through by rubbing. Uncracked nuts go back in the first bucket to be cracked again. There may be a few that need to be hand-cracked and peeled (there almost always are).
Once the nuts are well cracked, you’ll need to winnow the shells out. Set up a fan with a large bowl or cloth beneath it and slowly pour the nut meats in front of the fan set on medium or high. You may need to winnow the nutmeats several times, and still have to hand pick the larger shells out anyway.
This is one of the fastest methods of shelling acorns – much faster than cracking and peeling each individual acorn.
I prefer a cold water leaching because it’s practically foolproof. If you do the hot water leaching wrong, the tannins get locked inside the acorns and they never sweeten.
The easiest way to process acorns is with a good blender. Use 3 cups of water per cup of acorns and liquefy them. They have to be finely ground in water and leached of tannins. Once the acorns are liquefied, put them in wide-mouthed quart jars in a refrigerator. Every day, until the water stays clear, pour off the water from the jars (the acorn meal will settle to the bottom, but if you want to pour through a fine sieve, go ahead. I do) and refill with fresh water.
Once the acorns are leached, you can strain them and use them immediately in a recipe, or you can cook and freeze them to use later. To cook the acorn meal, you need to simmer them in water for 15 minutes, stirring constantly because they will burn and stick if you don’t. Pour them into 2-cup sized containers, cool, then freeze. To thaw, set the frozen acorn meal into a fine sieve and let it thaw over a bowl. Once it’s thawed, give it an extra squeeze through fine muslin to remove more water, and then use the meal in recipes. Discard the water.
You can also air dry acorns after they’ve been leached. Spread the acorns out in a thin layer on fine muslin or silk and suspend so air circulates around them. During the drying process, you have to stir the acorn meal well twice a day; otherwise little “rocks” of acorns will form. You may have to pinch the mealy lumps to break them up.
Now, this method works best outdoors, and you’ll have to fight off squirrels, field mice, and other acorn-loving critters. I usually end up dehydrating my acorns in the oven, with really small batches dried in a food dehydrator. You still have to stir often and pinch lumps, but it’s faster. I have a gas oven, so I set it as low as I can (175ºF) and let it dry slowly over several days.
After they cool, grind them again to make the meal as fine as possible.
Once the acorns are completely dry, you can vacuum seal them or store them in airtight jars or freeze them for later use.
You can substitute acorn meal for cornmeal or whole wheat in almost any recipe.
White Oaks:
Quercus alba – white oak
Q. bicolor – swamp oak
Q. imbricaria – shingle oak
Q. macrocarpa – burr oak
Q. marilandica – blackjack oak
Q. michaexii – swamp chestnut oak
Q. nigra – water oak
Q. phellos – willow oak
Q. prinus – chestnut oak
Q. stellata – post oak
Q. virginiana – live oak
Red Oaks:
Q. coccinea – scarlet oak
Q. falcate – southern red oak
Q. lyrata – overcap oak
Q. muehlenbergii – chinquapin oak
Q. pagoda – cherrybark oak
Q. palustris – pin oak
Q. Rubra – northern red oak
Q. shumardii – Shumard’s Oak
Q. velutina – black oak
Ebonypearl 
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