Roasted Acorns

We have several large oak trees, and right now they’re dropping acorns all over the place. With so many laying around I thought I’d try roasting them. Now that I’ve done it, I would not recommend it. It’s time consuming and they don’t even taste that great. They also made my mouth a little itchy, but that’s just an allergy thing.

The highlight of the whole experience was looking up from the table while shelling a pile of acorns to see a squirrel with its nose pressed against the window watching me. I can only imagine what he was thinking!

Acorns are bitter straight from the tree, so once you shell them you must boil them in water to remove the tannin which causes the bitter taste. The tannin turns the boiling water brown, and you replace the water every 15 minutes or so with fresh boiling water until it no longer turns brown. This process takes a long time—up to several hours. Finally you roast the acorns at 300 degrees F for up to an hour keeping a close eye on them so they don’t burn. But seriously, don’t make these. Just buy some roasted nuts at the store, or better yet try out this dry roasted chickpea recipe.