Monday, November 30, 2009

Acorn Grinding to Flour...The saga continues. So, Mike Jones found an attachment for a handy Kitchen Aid unit. I bungled around in his kitchen for a bit on Sunday and realized it would be better to take this show on the road and get out of his way.
After some fooling around at home, I was able to move all the shelled acorns through the grinder. It did not like the typical half of an acorn meat. The acorn meat would shatter and pop out of the screw feed and sometimes up out of the hopper.

Some eye protection is a good idea- the shattered acorns pop out of the feed tube as well. I sifted out the flour and put it in the freezer. The pea gravel-sized nutty bits were pretty hard. I tried running them again through the Kitchen Aid grinder, but they just jammed up the works. So, I put them in a lined colander and I filled the large pot a couple time with boiling water and poured it through the acorn crumbs. These two rinses produced rinse water that was still red.

Then I put the garden hose on and left it for an hour or so and eventually the water was clear.
The nutty little bits were not bitter, and retained the golden color. I let then drain overnight and put them back in shallow pans in the drying oven today at about 100 deg (Farenheit) and will let then dry for 2-3 days. Mike also found an old stone grinder and I will get it working and see if I can use it to grind up this batch of acorn nutlets. I will save about half of the nutlets as they make good garnishing- sprinkle over cookies, etc.