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Spruce Tip Recipes

Spruce Tip Recipes

About

Spruce tips, the young, green early growth on spruce trees are one of the easiest foraged foods you can harvest. They're delicious in the right place, but have a strong citrus flavor raw and need to be used carefully or they can ruin a dish.

Quick Links

If you're new to cooking with spruce tips, make sure to check out The Forager's Guide to Spruce Tips, Classic Spruce Tip Syrup, ice cream, panna cotta and key lime pie.

Different species, different flavors

Each type of spruce tree will have tips with a different, but similar flavor and some taste better than others. For example, I like the taste of white and blue spruce, but I can't stand black spruce.

a bowl of white spruce tipsThe tips are used in desserts, where they can be added where you might like the flavor of mint, or honeydew melon. They have a special piney taste that works very well with cream.

Spruce tip ice cream

Yew: Toxic Look Alike

The only real look alike to worry about is yew (Taxus spp). These are commonly planted in landscaping and should never be eaten.

Poisonous yew tips underside

Other Coniferous Ingredients

Spruce tips are only one of a few parts of evergreen trees you can cook with: pine cones and pine pollen are two others to know.

Young Pine Cones

Young pine cones are used to make Mugolio: The Italian Pine Cone Syrup, as well liquors called Zirbenschnapps.

a glass jar of syrup outside on a table Pine Pollen

The male cones of pine trees make pollen during a few days in the Spring, and it's harvested in a few areas around the world, most notably China, where it's used to make a sort of Spring candy.

a quart jar of pine pollenIf you want to see how to harvest your own, check out my post on Foraging and Cooking with Pine Pollen. Typically I use pollen in baking, as in my pollen bread and pollen pancakes.