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Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Condiments

Oven-Dried Tomatoes with Bergamot and Ramp Leaves

oven dried tomatoes recipe

This is one of my absolute favorite ways to preserve tomatoes—great for the bounty of tomato season, or even if you’re just craving good tomato flavor in the off season, which I often do. They’re made to mimic the oil-cured, semi-dried Italian tomatoes that restaurants often purchase from wholesale purveyors. If I say so myself,…

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Venison Fat Shmaltz

rendered venison fat in a jar

Wondering what to do with venison fat? Oh do I have a treat for you!  There’s a huge misconception about venison/deer fat and it’s use in cooking. Basically, people think it tastes like chapstick, it’s gamey and horrible, too rich, or some other common unfortunate misunderstanding. If you’re here, you’re probably bambi fat-curious, so know…

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Acorn Oil

Foragers Harvest Acorn Oil

Acorn oil is a secret nearly lost to time, a piece of edible history a few thousand years in the making, and one of the most cutting edge products I know of being produced today. Just the fact that it exists makes me giddy, and once you hear it’s story, I think you’ll agree.  It…

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Fresh Horseradish

Fresh dug horseradish

Fresh horseradish. Just the thought of it makes my eyes water with glee.  Horseradish is an ancient condiment, and It’s kept a good popularity compared to other root crops like skirret and parsley root, the former of which I’m still dying to grow. It’s popularity has to be due at least partly to the fact…

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Angelos Dried Wild Mushroom Ragu

Dried wild mushroom ragu recipe with dried boletes

A simple ragu of wild mushrooms was one of the recipes on the saute station back in the day when I was working at the now-closed Trattoria Da Vinci under Chef Angelo Volpicelli. Angelo was super talented, barely spoke English, and had owned his own restaurant in Rome for 12 years. Twelve years is a…

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Fermented Highbush Cranberry Hot Sauce

Highbush cranberry fermented hot sauce.

  Highbush cranberries are a great fruit: they’re easy to harvest, bountiful when you find a good patch, and reliable, as birds seem to leave them on the tree longer than others, at least from my experience. The fruit makes a great jelly, pates de fruits, traditional cranberry sauce, colored apple sauce–they’re a great addition…

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Mugolio: Pine Cone Syrup

Mugolio, a traditional pine cone syrup recipe

Mugolio, a dark, aromatic syrup imbued with the flavor of pine cones, is the poster child for the kind of crazy cool, Illuminati-esque foodstuff foragers have access to, all for the price of a hike, or even less, depending on how close you are to some pine trees. The syrup came on my radar when…

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Highbush Cranberry Cranberry Sauce

Highbush Cranberry Cranberry Sauce Recipe

If you’ve ever cooked with highbush cranberries, if you’re like me, the first thing you did was probably try to imitate cranberry sauce. This is my simple version.  The flavor of the two fruits is kind of similar, but highbush cranberries are juicy, juicy, and make a brilliant red liquid and coulis. Regular cranberries really…

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Dried Ramp Ranch Dressing

No, I’m not better than making homemade ranch dressing with ramp leaves. Dried ramp leaves are one of the best wild ingredients to preserve for your pantry in the off season, and there’s probably not a better poster child for them than in some good ol’ramp leaf ranch.  Now, I’ve made ranch-type sauces out of…

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Wild Plum Leather (Tklapi)

Tkelapi or wild plum leather made from Prunus americana, American wild plums

Wild plums (Prunus americana) are in season, and they’re a puzzle. The flesh is rich and sweet, the perfume so deeply floral it will make your toes curl, but the skins, the skins are tough, and tannic enough to make you feel like you drank a few cups of chianti straight. The two aforementioned reasons are…

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Dried Black Trumpet-Ramp Butter

Dried black trumpet mushroom and ramp leaf butter recipe

I’ve never met a wild mushroom butter I didn’t like, and the few variations on the simple theme (especially the fresh porcini butter) are some of the most trusty and popular recipes on this website. For the most part, you can substitute different mushrooms in the basic recipe, but this one I developed especially to…

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Pheasant Back Fermented Soy Sauce

Fermented pheasant back or dryad saddle shoyu recipe with koji

Prime pheasant back season is usually about over after the spring chicken of the woods pop, but just because they’re big and tough as nails doesn’t mean you can’t do anything with them, and pheasant back shoyu is a great example, especially if you like edible science projects. Shoyu and it’s cousin tamari (soy sauces…

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Burdock Yamagobo

Yamagobo or pickled burdock root recip

Yamagobo is one of the tried and true recipes for cooking with burdock root that comes from Asian cuisine. It’s a simple recipe: burdock roots peeled and mixed with a pickle solution typically colored orange with..carrot powder, or more commonly orange food coloring–no thanks. After a reader tipped me off to the preparation, I had…

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Some nice wild enoki clones from @unkle_fungus Can Some nice wild enoki clones from @unkle_fungus Cant wait until these start popping up when the snow melts. The difference between the coloration of wild ones (pic 1) and cultivated that are white from the lack of sun (pic 2) is always interesting to compare. (The cultivated ones are a different species of Flammulina too). 

We’re really lucky to have such a vibrant community of small, local mushroom growers and related makers. Feel free to tag your favorite you like or one I should know about in the comments. 

#enokimushroom #mushroomgrowers #flammulinavelutipes #blanche #allthemushroomtags #wintermushrooms
Celebrated my birthday last night with a few stiff Celebrated my birthday last night with a few stiff spruce’n’sodas. The spruce tip liquor I collaborated on with @ida_graves_distillery drinks like a mildly piney gin. Dangerously easy to drink. #sprucetips #craftliquor #drinkatree #itsmybirthdaybitches #im25again
Social media can be a wall-to-wall, endless string Social media can be a wall-to-wall, endless string of triumphs. We all know reality isn’t like that, so with the snow melting here, I thought I’d share a funny maple season fail with you (at the time it was not funny).

I was making maple soda out of sap, sweetfern and syrup that I like. I’d kept the glass bottle of soda in the fridge for a couple weeks, waiting for a good time to get to it. I’d started the mother batch with a pinch of commercial champagne yeast, which is vigorous stuff. 

One night I got up and poured myself a glass of water, and sleepily forgot to close the fridge all the way, which increased the temp. A few hours later I woke up to what sounded like a grenade going off. 

The bottle exploded and the inside of the fridge, all its contents, and the floor were covered with sticky maple juice, and I spent the next two hours mopping and picking out shards of glass that had embedded themselves like shrapnel in the walls of the fridge. 

Now, I use plastic restaurant cambros to make carbonated drinks. 💫

#fermentationfails #fail #soda #fermentation #explosions #dontrythisathome
My chief editorial assistant about to do backflips My chief editorial assistant about to do backflips for smoked goat kidneys. 

If you would have asked me a few years ago if I would see myself writing recipes (and filming videos) on making dog treats I would have laughed. 

But, working with @shepherdsongfarm, trying to figure out creative, economical methods for butchery and whole carcass utilization for lamb and goat has pushed my creativity into new places. Grateful for that. 💫

If you get down on kidneys, I have a good version for humans on my site too. A good piece of charcuterie to know. 

Hand model @pgerasimo 

#grassfed #goat #eatmoregoat #kidneys #offal #dogtreats #rescuepitbull #editorialassistant
7pm ET tonight on @the_outdoor_channel I take @dan 7pm ET tonight on @the_outdoor_channel I take @danielvitalis hunting for mushrooms and pigeons in WI, then I cook dinner on the farm for @wild.fed, his outdoors series that shows that wild food is much more than just meat. 

If you don’t have the outdoor channel, you could use the free trial of @frndlytv that will let you watch it live. 

Finished dishes I did were pigeon brochettes with rams bacon, sunflower roulades and wild cherry sauce and pigeon, sweet corn and wild mushroom stew. 

#mushroomhunting #wildfed #foragerchef #outdoorchannel #pigeon #foraging
After watching an old episode of Munchies (see You After watching an old episode of Munchies (see YouTube/Vice) I scribbled down a prep for yellow foot chanterelles a Swedish food truck was making. They took flatbread (tonnebrod, but I use lefse, because 🇳🇴💪) piled high with hot yellowfeet and fresh kraut, mayo, Västerbotten cheese (fontina or Hushållsost are ok subs). 

It’s one of the best ways I’ve had yellowfeet, like a funky, cheese, Nordic burrito. Just killer. 

I even forgot my lefse and served some to family in a couple BS flour tortillas Grandma had (heresy, IK) —still didn’t suck. 

Props to @ingebretsens in Mpls for making their own lefse since my Norwegian Grandma wasn’t  around. I channeled her though. 

#midwestwinter #lefse #lefseforlife #youbetcha #oleandlenawouldbeproud #yellowfootchanterelles #wildmushrooms
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