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Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Leafy Greens | Basic Profiles

foraged green salad

Violets

Wild edible violets

Common violets, or Viola odorata, are a great, unassuming wild flower, but they have a lot more use than in a bouquet or as something to enjoy on a trail: you can eat them too. For me, violets are one of a lot of greens I pick in the spring, along with sochan, nettles, ramp leaves,…

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Watercress

Wild Watercress

Watercress, a.k.a. Nasturtium officinale You’ve probably heard of it, maybe even seen it in a nice grocery store, but, if you’re unfamiliar with harvesting your own watercress or cooking with it in general, I hope I can share a couple points to help you enjoy it. Watercress is one of the building block plants of…

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Cow Parsnip

Cow Parsnip Heracleum lanatum_-8

“It makes ye go blind!” “It can only die from a silver nail through the root!” “Eat wild parsnip? Never! There’s only poison parsnip!”  “It’s all over the roads and trails, storm the woods! kill it with fiyaaaah!” These are pretty much the sayings and overall feeling conveyed by the well intended but torch-wielding public…

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Lamb’s Quarters / Wild Spinach

Lamb's Quarters, Chenopodium or Wild Spinach

They taste great, run 8$/lb wholesale, yield multiple rounds of crops in the time regular garden plants give a single one, and, they’re weeds. They’re lamb’s quarters, and if you appreciate good food, you should be familiar with them. Along with nettles, these were one of the first wild green that I picked and ate….

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Chickweed

Edible chickweed or stellaria

Chickweed is not a weed (at least to me). Chickweed’s a beautiful, petite green with a crisp texture and mild, sweet flavor reminiscent of corn silk that adds elegance to any plate it touches, especially giant juicy ones like the water chickweed above, which is my favorite. It took me a couple years to find…

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Galinsoga

Galinsoga parviflora, the gallant soldier

2017 to me was the year of the plant. Working with my network and connections I was able to bring in more wild-harvested product by weight than any restaurant I know of. One week in the Spring I remember I clocked us going through 50lbs of nettles alone. The hardest plants to get my hands…

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Broccoli Leaves

Baby spigariello or Italian broccoli leaves

  Yes, you can eat broccoli leaves, and they’re delicious, but even as a veteran chef, until I met some farm broccoli growing in a garden, I didn’t know about them at all.  I was walking through one of the large gardens at my girlfriends family farm, clipping some weeds (purslane, amaranth) to bring to…

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Cow Parsnip Blossoms

cow parsnip blossoms

  I’m jealous of the old knowledge and culinary traditions woven into other cultures. A few years ago I was looking for some info on where Italians pick porcini. I found an Italian website (I’ve since tried to find it and it’s gone or has been taken down) that talked about hunting mushrooms, but also…

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Virginia Waterleaf

Virginia waterleaf

Another winter of cooking root vegetables nearly over, my mouth and psyche have watered dreaming of the first sweet, tender greens and shoots of Spring. A new one I’ve been adding to the mix is Virginia Waterleaf, and it’s a fun one. I learned about these on a plant walk with my friend Kenton of…

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Nasturtium Leaves And Flowers

Nasturtium leaves and flowers

  Lots of chefs like to garnish things with flowers, they’re pretty, but often that’s about it. We eat with our eyes though, and I if there’s an edible flower I can eat, or serve, it’s going on the menu.  Nasturtiums though? They’re a completely different story.  Nasturtiums are not only beautiful, but are edible,…

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Hop Shoots

Wild edible hop shoots or Humulus lupulus

<a class=”more-link” href=” https://foragerchef.com/tag/hop-shoots/More Hops</a> Meet the most expensive vegetable in the world. Hop shoots are the young, tender shoots of hop vines, and they taste a bit like beer meets asparagus. I haven’t done experiments with different varieties, so for the purposes in this post I’m referring to common hops or Humulus lupulus that…

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Wild Mustard Raabs / Wintercress buds

Wild mustard raabs-4

When we found out we were hosting the Swedish ambassador for a dinner two weeks ago, I was pumped. It was supposed to be a key moment in the drive for luring the world’s fair to Minnesota, which could be a reality if our team’s food really knocks the socks off of people at the…

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Common Stinging Nettles

nettles

In Europe, cooking stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) is common right of Spring. There aren’t many American’s that crave them, but that’s slowly changing. They’re a special plant, and the first thing I look for after a long Midwestern winter.  Why would you want to eat them? Because they’re delicious, and incredibly healthy. In the kitchen,…

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Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun var Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun variation I did on the house dessert of a little restaurant I was at for a time. 

Don’t be surprised if you smell like maple syrup a few hours after eating it. Using ground dried golden chanterelles is another variation that’s on my list to try. 

Link in bio to see how to make your own. 

#candycaps #treslechescake #myteethfellout #wildmushrooms #wildfoodlove
ARISE #fungimancer #frostbite #morels #tisthes ARISE 

 #fungimancer 
#frostbite #morels #tistheseason #mushroomhunting #winter #offseasontraining
Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your suppo Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your support with the first line of spirits @ida_graves_distillery and I collaborated on. 

Brock did a great job wrangling the wild things, and we have plenty of fun ideas in store (think aging nocino in barrels, new flavor combos, etc). If you’re in the Twin Cities and still need some, the amaro is #soldout but @ombibulousmn has nocino, and should have the spruce  liquor (goes down like pine gin) soon. Thank you!

#distillery #foragedcocktails #nocino #craftspirits #drinkatree #mnspirits #smallbatch #godscountry
Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too s Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too specific a term for me—I don’t limit myself to vehicular-harvested meat. 

However you feel about the topic, grab some popcorn and head over to the comment section on my blog (link in bio) for the 🔥personal stories from readers have shared from around the world. 

There’s the kid who brought home a nutria after school, a wife getting 4 deer with the same car, a train hitting a herd of elk, a bear named squish, living in a house with weasels, and more. 

#budgetgourmet #gleaning #scavenging #meatismeat #roadkill #freefoods #finderskeepers #wastenotwantnot
Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberr Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberry cultivars (3 types!) on me before the last snowfall and I honestly don’t even know where to start after processing them. I’d already made jams and hot sauce already and I have enough for a year. 😅

Great time to practice the cold-juice which ensures the juice isn’t bitter. 

Anyone else have any ideas? 

You can still find some on the shrubs if the birds didn’t get them up by the north shore. 

#highbushcranberry #winterforaging #birdberries #sweetnectar #foragerproblems #juiceme #embarassmentofriches #wildfoodlove
100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw v 100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw vegan snacks, but when I read about Euell Gibbon’s wild hackberry candy bars I had to try them. The  originals were just crushed hackberries and hickory nuts, but, I’ve read that Euell grew to dislike the crunch of hackberry seeds later in life. 

Here’s the thing though, if you sift the hackberry flour, you get a fun texture, with no worries about cracking a tooth. 

These are equal parts ground hackberries, dried wild blueberries, and hickory nuts, with a splash of maple syrup to bind.

The end product is a shelf stable, nutrient-packed bite filled with protein, carbohydrates, fats and natural sugars infinitely adaptable to your local landscape.

The texture is chewy and nougat-like, and now I’m curious to see how they’d perform baked in recipes that use frangipane or almond paste. 

#euellgibbons #energybars #hackberry #crushin #paleobreakfast #tradionalfood #wildfoodlove #rawfoods
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