Mesquite Flour

[savagman]

I have long been intrigued by mesquite.  It's my favorite wood to grill on and the prolific beans have piqued my interest for a long time.  We have many mesquite trees in our yard including Chilean, Velvet, and Honey Mesquite.  The Chilean provides an abundance of beans but they are bitter and not palatable to humans.  The honey and velvet mesquites in my yard taste very good.  The flavor varies from tree to tree and somewhat less from year to year.  

We finally committed to harvesting beans (from the tree, not off the ground) and after sun drying on trays took them to a Desert Harvesters grinding event.  

4 - 5 gallon buckets processed to 9 lbs of flour.  We made waffles and oatmeal cookies today.  I am truly impressed by the flavor.  What an abundant resource that is currently underutilized.  If there is interest, I will follow up with a couple recipes.

[WHT_MTNMAN]

That is cool.  Yeah I would be interested in hearing more.  

[Chef]

This is amazing. I didn't know that this niche existed. It's great to see this abundant resource being put to good use.

I can only imagine the amount of labor involved being a deterrent to more people utilizing it.

Long ago, I worked at a high-end Southwestern cuisine restaurant, and we utilized mesquite flour to dust meats before pan-searing.

I always enjoyed the sweetness in the flour we used.

 

[muledeerarea33?]

I make it at home when time allows. Use a spice/coffee bean grinder. I’ll only do a pound or two since it’s pretty time intensive. The grinder gums up often due to the sugar content in the flour. When you use it, cut the amount of sugar in the recipe about a fourth or so.

[brent]

Awesome! I marked the flour milling event on my calandar to hopefully make it next year.

[Eli]

That’s pretty awesome, thanks for sharing !