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'Sup wild plant/foraging thread. I got into foraging big time last spring. For several years I loved going to various spots for my Rubus fix (blackberries, raspberries, and black raspberries) but last year with all the extra time at home, and a new house near a very good nature area full of foragables, I decided to go for some more things. I live in northern New England, but a lot of these things can be found all over. Effort post incoming. Garlic mustard:  Very young, this is about what they're like near me right now. Mild garlicy flavor, harvest now and eat them raw in salads, or use as a herb to be turned into pesto. I think this is as far as they get their first year (biennial plants)  Kind of a medium age (2nd year), you can see seed pods just starting to form. It'll be a little more tough and bitter at this stage, so maybe harvest a bunch and try sautéing down like a spinach.  Old and mostly done with (also 2nd year). Flowers and seeds formed, about 12-18" tall, very tough and bitter. You can try to eat them, but eh. However, you can dig up the roots wash them and then grind them up with some vinegar to make something very akin to horseradish. Garlic mustard is an invasive in the US , so pick freely and with wild abandon, including puling up the roots. Fiddleheads: Sprue said more than I could on the topic, but just a few extra points: Generally, only ostrich fern fiddleheads are considered edible. Other fern species may be referred to as "fiddleheads" but only collect ostrich ferns. How to tell an ostrich fern. 1) Stem shape. The stem has a deep groove in the middle, making a U shape in profile if cut. Like so:  2) Hair. There should be none. Fiddleheads have smooth stems, no hair or fuzz. 3) "Paper" skin. Although there is no hair, there will very likely be some brown papery covering on the young fiddleheads:  It's slightly sticky on the younger heads, as they got older it tends to fall off on its own, but you can just brush it off yourself if it's still there. The University of Maine Extension has a nice page on Fiddleheads, including some preparation methods: https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/4198e/ Something to keep in mind is that regardless of FINAL prep method, they are ALWAYS recommended to be boiled or steamed for 10-15 minutes first, even if they are going to be sautéed, pickled, or fried later. There is a mild toxin in them that needs to be cooked out. Though I have also read ANECDOTAL stories of people just going straight to frying or sautéing and not suffering any ill effect, but I have not tried it myself. Though even if you do, I think the symptoms are more like a stomach ache, not death or anything. Ramps Everyone's elusive foraging favorite, ramps:   Similar to an onion or leek. Short window of foraging, often in low lying areas of the woods with thick canopy coverage and lots of organic matter (so thick piles of leaves and whatnot.) I've read that some areas are getting over foraged. Ramps are hard to commercially cultivate, so big demand sees an increase in foraging, and they take a few years for a patch of them to get "up and running", so to speak. Only take like 1/5, at most (I've even seen suggested only 1/10) of what you find in a ramp patch, and ideally only take the leaves and stem, don't dig up the bulb. Careful to not pick a toxic lookalike, like Lily of the Valley. Look for just TWO leaves, on a white to reddish stem. And, the easiest way to ID them, they will smell oniony when you break the leaf. Dandelion: Do I even need a picture? Oh, what the hell:  Most parts are actually edible! The leaves can be picked raw and added to salads (try to get them before the flowers appear, otherwise they're bitter.) The flowers can be picked and steeped in hot water to make a dandelion tea. It can be drank as it, or you can use that "tea" to make things like dandelion syrup (add sugar,) or dandelion jelly (add sugar and pectin.) The roots can even be dug up, washed, dried, roasted, and ground up to make something slightly akin to coffee. I did it once last year, not worth the effort. It was actually tasty, almost like a cross between tea and coffee, but honestly takes a LOT of work. There's other flowers you can make syrups and jellies out of, too. Violets are a popular one (make a nice vibrant purple jelly,) and last year I made jelly from red clovers flavored with some mint from my garden. Sumac: Not poison sumac, obviously (those have white berries,) but other varieties, typically staghorn sumac:  Everyone knows these, they can grow just about anywhere, and seem to LOVE abandoned lots and the edges of parks and playgrounds. The little berries/seeds are edible. Often used as a spice in middle eastern dishes, sumac is kind of lemony and tart. You can gather the seed cones, dry them, and then shake off the powder for spices, or you can make "sumac-ade" by soaking a few seed cones in a pitcher of cold water overnight for a slightly tart beverage. Sugar to taste. And again, like the flowers, you can turn that liquid into syrup or jelly as well. Rubuses: One of any number of "berries" (not true berries, but whatever, just call them berries) from the Rubus genus. Including, but not limited to, raspberries, blackberries, salmon berries, cloud berries, black raspberries, and thimble berries. We all know what these look like, right?  Standard red raspberry.  Blackberry. Typically a little bigger than raspberries, larger brambles and thorns, and at least in my neck of the woods, the wild varieties ripen later in the season than red ones.   Salmonberry. Often in shades of yellow, orange, and reddish-orange. I think only on the west coast, I've never seen them here in New England.  Black raspberry. My favorite, and should not be confused with a blackberry. They are smaller, and will pull "cleanly" from the stem, and have a hollow cap, whereas blackberries will keep that small portion of stem inside the berry. Things in Rubus are a nice thing to harvest, especially with children, because there are basically* no look-alikes. Does it look like a raspberry? Congratulations, it's either IS or is closely related to a raspberry and is edible. Though some varieties (like thimble berries) are kind of bland in comparison to the others. *The only thing that comes close is a mulberry:  But, 1) They grow on trees, not bushes, and when picked there is always that 1/2-1" piece of green stem attached, so they're easy to identify. And 2) They are also edible! So still no worries about accidentally getting something dangerous.
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Apr 15, 2021 16:54
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 18:01 |
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Harry Potter on Ice posted:DrBouvenstein can you soak sumac spices to get the same tart drink or just the cones? I want to say probably? The tricky part is that the spices you buy are ground so fine it might be hard to get them to really go in the water and soak properly. I feel like they'd just try to float on top and clump up a lot. When you can submerge the whole cone, that's not as big an issue (though several of the berries will certainly come off and float up to the top.)
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Apr 29, 2021 21:28
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X-Posted from the GWS canning thread: Pickled fiddleheads. Only used about half of the fiddleheads I picked, so I'll either make another batch (maybe make a spicy batch) or just blanche and freeze them to eat later.
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May 5, 2021 14:09
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I also dabbled in some nocino this year. Not great photos, but:  Here it is when I just started it in July. I was just barely able to get green walnuts in time. They were a little tough to cut through, but still green enough to use. Let it steep in there with the sugar and spices for approx. 2 months, then strained and bottled:  The big bottle is for me and the GF, the two smaller bottles I gave away (which is why I also included a label with what it actually is.) Mine came out great...so good, you can easily forget it's a full 80 proof liquor, ha. Sorry to hear that yours wasn't good, MEIN RAVEN. I'm not sure what would make it taste like vinegar... in theory, not enough sugar would just make it taste like a black walnut vodka, just more harsh and not sweet. I wonder if somehow the walnuts rotted? Were they completely covered in the vodka? Container maybe wasn't sealed properly? In too warm a place? DrBouvenstein fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 20:37
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