From Pods to Pancakes: The Complete Mesquite!
It’s midway through our hot desert summer here in Arizona. This year (2018) seems to have been especially dry and hot. Despite the lack of moisture and oppressive heat, there are some plants and trees that don’t seem to mind the long wait for late summer monsoon rain. Among those is the ever-ubiquitous mesquite tree. This tree has an extensive root system that travels great distances and depths following the slightest amount of moisture.
This being said, most of the roots are shallow and when overwatered the top outgrows the roots and the evidence is found throughout the valley after a monsoon storm in toppled trees that had taken advantage of a regimen of overwatering that resulted in excessive top growth and minimal root support. Many of the trees that experience this are large enough that it is impossible to straighten them and they are merely trimmed up and left to continue growing their crooked ways. Though this gnarliness is admired by many, it often represents a scar of excessive moisture.
History
A hundred years ago during the dawn of modern-day settlers to the low desert valleys, there were once dense mesquite forests known as “bosques”. These bosques occurred anywhere where there was moisture found in the soil (and expanded their region as agricultural ditches, flooding, and cattle ranching spread the ideal range of the trees. The mesquite forests formed an extensive network of fibrous roots that resisted erosion, nourished the soil, and protected each other from toppling in winds. As groundwater was depleted by continual pumping and surface water was continually diverted from rivers the riparian areas that once extended as much as three miles from the Gila, Salt, and Verde rivers began to dry up and vanish, and so did many of the original bosques with their twisted black trunks, shady umbrella of branches, and abundant wildlife.
Tree of Life
The native mesquite tree varieties have long been valued as an ethnobotanical gem by ancient peoples who used every part of the tree. The wood of course, for cooking and construction, the thorns for needlework, the bark for fiber, the sap as an adhesive, emulsifier, and cosmetic, the leaves for mulch, the pods for a high protein flour, and the flowers provide excellent bee forage for some of the most prized honey on earth. Shallow-rooted and heat-sensitive crops may be planted below the canopy, benefitting from filtered light, leaf compost, and abundant nutrients. The lightweight and airy canopy allows heat to dissipate at night and the stomata on the leaves open up allowing evapotranspiration to continue through the night, thereby cooling the ambient environment. The ancient peoples of the Southwestern desert understood and appreciated the mesquite tree for all that it provided them for their survival and so it earned the title “Tree of Life”.
The Pods
Among all of the valuable offerings of the mesquite tree, our focus today is on its sweet pods, which will be the emphasis of the remainder of this post. I have long been aware that mesquite pods produce a nutritious flour and have even had some recipes made from such, but not all mesquite species produce valuable pods. Many species, particularly the non-native and ubiquitous Chilean Mesquite (Prosopis chilensis) and its hybrids, do not produce particularly edible pods; some producing very few or none whatsoever. Unfortunately, to complicate matters, mesquite species will often naturally hybridize, thus tainting seedlings of the more desirable species such as Honey Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), Velvet Mesquite (Prosopis velutina), and Screwbean Mesquite (Prosopis pubescens) with undesirable genetics.
The pods of each are unique. The pods of the honey mesquite are usually straight or slightly curved, plump, and often show off purple markings making them especially attractive. They express sweet honey-lemon overtones in flavor and result in a very pleasant flour. Screwbean mesquite is known to provide excellent dry flour without too much fuss, and velvet mesquite provides its own unique sweetness.
It is best when harvesting pods that you select trees by actually sampling the pods of different individual trees (and even at different seasons), as there is definite genetic variation among members of the same species. Get tasting and find your favorite tree!
Despite having a knowledge of the mesquite trees many virtues, I was still personally resistant to turning to mesquite as a food source for many years. My idea of a beautiful and abundant landscape has a reluctant allowance for thorns, tough food pods, and a lot of processing. My experiences with mesquite flour in recipes are mixed, and decidedly only tasty once combined with regular wheat flour and lots of sugar.
The other drawback of mesquite trees in the landscape is the mess. Amid the hot dry air and crispy plants in the middle of the summer, our landscapes here in the desert are often made less attractive by the sheer quantity of debris that is shed by plants trying to conserve moisture. To add to the copious quantities of leaf litter (that is made even more abundant during monsoon winds) we have an overabundance of mesquite pods dropping from nearly every single (unhybridized) mesquite tree. For most people, this is truly an annoyance and they feel a general sense of dread just thinking about braving the desert heat in June or July to go out and clean up the mess.
I was one of those people who told myself that I would never have one of those annoying, messy desert trees in my landscape. But this summer I have had a paradigm shift that began with a determination to help my sister’s family with summer yard work. Every June I again ponder upon the best way to deal with the mess of pods under the mature honey mesquite tree in her front yard. If I put them in the compost they inevitably sprout little thorny trees in the garden. I also can’t stand the thought of putting a high carbon natural product in the landfill, and would love to see this resource put to good use- I don’t have any goats.
Harvesting
This year I decided that with a little extra effort added to the cleanup of the pods, I would give mesquite flour a try. Since then I have come to find out that in the dry heat of June is usually the very BEST time to harvest them. Before I tell you what I did with them I want to make it clear that timing your harvest is important. The ancient timing of mesquite harvests was always conducted prior to the arrival of the summer monsoon thunderstorms, which usually begin sometime in July. In June the pods drop and are usually plenty dry for milling, but ensuring the dryness of the pods is only one concern. While it is much easier to mill very dry mesquite pods because green ones tend to gum up your equipment there are also other things to consider.
Because there is an increasing interest in returning to the culturally significant practice of milling mesquite flour there is also an increasing concern surrounding an invisible fungus that takes up residence in the pods once the rains arrive. The fungus is known as Aspergillus flavilus and can lead to the formation of aflatoxins in the seedpod. Based on tests that have been conducted to identify the presence of dangerous levels of aflatoxins, it is fairly easy to avoid aflatoxin exposure by simply ensuring that the pods have never come in contact with moisture. Those pods that do have a very high likelihood of being contaminated. They may be harvested dry and ripe directly from the tree itself or from the ground if you know the area is clean and has remained free from moisture during the development and drop of the pods. One method is to lay down a sheet to collect the pods as they drop. This practice is usually necessary over the extended period of time that the pods are falling from the tree.
Processing
PREPARING THE PODS BY HEATING OR FREEZING
The processing of the pods turned out to be WAY easier than I had expected. But don’t get ahead of yourself. You will see, as you collect your pods, that there are likely many holes in them. These are exit holes of the harmless bruchid beetle. That doesn’t guarantee the presence of any additional beetles or larvae inside your pods, but more likely than not, they are there. That is why the next step is to either deep freeze the pods in your freezer for a day or two, or heat the pods. It is pretty easy to simply place the pods in an enclosed bucket and store the bucket in your car for a few days. A hot day in June or July in Arizona in a car usually does the trick. Inevitably, there are usually some escapees though, and if your container isn’t well-sealed you may have a large influx of small pesky-though-harmless beetles flying around. Fortunately for those of you that are feeling queasy about adding this kind of protein to your diet, don’t worry, the instructions below should ensure no bug protein (or very little!) in your recipes.
MILLING THE PODS WITH A VITAMIX
First I tried our hand mill, which worked well, but just took a lot of time (though not as much as the ancient practice of stone milling!), and then we tried the Vitamix blender. Just a note: If you do not want to pit your blender or food processor, just start blending slowly and work up to your settled on speed. If you follow the instructions below for glass and hard plastic blender pitchers you likely will not experience problems with pitting, but I do not guarantee anything. Once the pods are ground, just put the flour through a sifter and voila! You have beautiful mesquite flour, ready to use. To ensure long-term freshness, store the flour in your freezer.
For obvious reasons, utilizing our Vitamix blender turned out to be so much faster than the hand grinder. Two large handfuls of pods seemed to be about right. Any more than that and it was too much for the blender to mill evenly. I found from experience that at full speed the seeds will pit the blender, and blend a larger quantity of the fibrous tough seed husk and seed into the flour, imparting a coarser texture and more musky and bitter flavor. Ultimately, what we found works the best was to start the Vitamix at its lowest setting and work up incrementally (blending about 10 seconds at each setting) until you get to level 5.
What is great about using this method is that you have little risk of pitting your blender pitcher, and you end up with only the finest flour, leaving the husk and seed intact with the chaff (and the bruchid beetles!) winnowed out early on in the process. Dump the contents of the blender into a bowl repeating the process until it is full, then it is time to sift.
MILLING THE PODS WITH A HAND-CRANK MILL
For the preppers among us, a hand crank mill has a particular attraction and can be pretty handy, though a little more labor-intensive. Use the same setting you would use to make your cracked wheat hot cereal. It is best to break the pods into two-inch pieces or less prior to loading them into the hopper. You will find that as the sticky, tough chaff begins to bind the grinding wheels it may be necessary to reverse the crank to loosen the binding. Do this as repeatedly as necessary throughout this process.
I found that when I used the hand crank mill for mesquite pods often the tough seed husks flatten with the seed still inside and the flour is still ground fine enough for use after sifting. It is the seed and inner husk, after all, that imparts the slightly bitter muskiness characteristic of mesquite. It is this muskiness that tends to be a stronger and more unpleasant acquired taste. The flour without the husk and seed is quite pleasant to most.
SIFTING THE CHAFF FROM THE FLOUR
Using a regular can flour sifter would probably work the fastest to separate the flour from the chaff, but since we didn’t have one we just used a small kitchen sieve instead. Ideally, your flour sifter would have a mesh size suitable for baking flour (The can sifter that we mistakenly purchased online had a mesh size that turned out to be roughly suitable for cornmeal- not really what we were going for). Sift the blended mixture and dump the remaining chaff into a separate container and the resulting flour is sweet, nutty, and gluten-free!
The sifting process for either milling method will essentially be the same using a blender or food processor.
If you want a healthy fiber-rich protein meal, take the chaff and sift it through a colander after you have completed the initial sifting process (that left the largest material- the seed husks behind). Then put the fines back into the blender a second time. This can be run through the sifter or sieve one last time to obtain the fiber-rich protein meal.
Nutritional Value
Mesquite is well known as a superfood with great nutrition, some of which are fiber, protein, calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. Many recipes have you cook the mesquite flour, however, we have recently learned that mesquite is easier to digest raw than cooked (and the flavor is milder). We will be adding it to our breakfast green smoothies!
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Happy Homesteading!
RECIPES
Mesquite Pancakes:
Marin found a basic recipe online for mesquite pancakes, and the kids loved it! You can also use it as you would cornmeal, it has a similar (though softer) texture, but as is the case with many types of non-grain flours, mesquite flour benefits from the gluten in wheat flour to help it stick together.
Keep in mind that mesquite is already super sweet and does not need much-added sugar in recipes. For the pancake recipe, she used half mesquite and half flour. Be aware that mesquite flour has a high natural sugar content, so these hotcakes tend to burn easily!
Mesquite Syrup:
What to do with the leftover chaff? Before you discard all that chaff, be adventurous! According to some sources, with a little purified water and patience boiling, it can be processed into a sweet syrup! We are going to try this next. Stay tuned for more mesquite adventures!
Update: We tried the mesquite syrup! But not with the chaff… All we did was put 1 pound of the whole pods in a crockpot with 1 gallon of water and steeped it overnight on high (lid on). In the morning we just took the lid off and let it sit on low for a day or more until the consistency was syrup. For this process, we did not add any sugar, but we added a bit of stevia and vanilla to make it tastier. Definitely a very “mesquitey” acquired taste. We will be trying some new recipes to see what works best.