Home-Ground Mesquite Flour

Harvest mesquite tree seedpods and learn to make home-ground, gluten-free mesquite flour.

By Letters From Our Readers
Published on May 12, 2022
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by Renée Benoit
Mesquite seedpods will produce gluten free flour.

The desert surprises me on almost a daily basis. I originally came from a rainy climate where the soil was fertile, and everything seemed to grow on its own. I didn’t fully appreciate this until I moved to a Mediterranean climate where the soil wasn’t easily coaxed into growing things. But that’s OK. Each place has its own attributes, its own pros and cons.

One big pro of our new desert home is the mesquite trees. Indigenous peoples in the southwestern United States used mesquite for many things – food and medicine, and a source of wood for bows, arrows, sewing needles, and other implements. They ground the dried seedpods into flour using a stone mortar and pestle, then mixed the protein-rich, gluten-free flour with water and formed it into cakes before baking them in clay ovens. They also made mush with mesquite flour, or mixed the meal with water for a nourishing drink.

mesquite pods on a paper towelSeveral species of mesquite trees are native to the area spanning Southern California to Texas, and from the Mexican border as far north as Kansas and Missouri. Where I live in Arizona, the most common are honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) and velvet mesquite (P. velutina). The latter grows on our property.

Seedpods hang from our trees between June and September and are ready to harvest beginning in mid-July. Ready-to-process honey mesquite pods are light-tan in color and should be picked when they’re dry and brittle. Velvet mesquite pods look similar, but are mottled-red.

I don’t collect seedpods from the ground, because they can harbor a mold that produces aflatoxin. This toxic substance is present after the pods get wet, so I also avoid picking pods immediately after a rain. I choose pods that release from the tree easily; if they nearly fall into my hand, they’re ready to harvest. I also avoid those with mildewy or moldy coloring.

I process only pods with little holes in them, which means the mesquite beetles have hatched and departed. If there aren’t holes, beetles may still be inside – but don’t be concerned if you eat insects! A 5-gallon bucket filled to the top with mesquite seedpods will yield about 1 pound of flour.

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