Foraging and Cooking Mulberries

Juicy fruit falling from trees like mana from heaven. Mulberries are a taste of days gone by, and an exciting fruit that can be foraged in large quantities. You won't need to chase monkeys and weasels to get them, but you might need to climb a tree. Today I'll share everything I've learned about foraging and cooking this fascinating and confusing wild fruit.

Despite the children's rhyme, these are a tree, not a bush, and there's a number of varieties in the family Moraceae. The common mulberry tree for most people, and the focus of this post, is the Asian white mulberry or silk mulberry (Morus alba, formerly Morus multicaulis).

White mulberry trees were brought to the United States in the 1900's in hopes of creating a mulberry silk industry. as the leaves are apparently a good food for silk worms. Beyond silk and fruit, the deciduous trees are a hardwood that's supposed to make excellent firewood.

Besides the Asian variety there's Morus rubra, the red mulberry native to North America, which is rare in the Midwest. The black mulberry (Morus nigra) been cultivated for hundreds of years in Europe, and much longer in China and Asia where it's native. Then there's the Pakistani mulberry (Morus macroura) that produces the largest fruit at around 4 inches long.

How to Identify a Mulberry Tree

There's a number of confusing aspects to understand: the leaves, the color of the fruit, and the genetic mess caused by the Asian variety hybridizing with the native species.

Leaves

Mulberry leaves vary in shape and can be oval-shaped or lobed. Lobed leaves are more common on young saplings.

The bark of mature trees has tell-tale yellow fissures with numerous gray ridges.

Mulberries growing in yards and urban areas are often confused for weeds. The fast growing young saplings have a slightly messy, disorganized look to them.

Mulberry Fruit

The most confusing part of the white mulberry is that the ripe fruit can be white or purple-ish black when ripe depending on the individual tree. The name alba means white and is ill-conceived, as trees producing white fruit are essentially an albino variation less common than the darker, purple fruit.

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the tree. Nurseries and garden centers are well known for selling "black mulberry trees" that are actually Morus. alba.

Hybrids

Asian mulberry cross-pollinates and hybridizes with native Morus rubra. Over the roughly 200 years they've been in North America they've slowly diluted the genetics of our native species.

Separating hybrids from the native variety is difficult, often confusing skilled foragers even in areas where red mulberries are more common. There's also fruitless/sterile ornamental varieties planted to prevent purple stains on sidewalks.

The person most skilled in identifying true M. rubra from hybrids I know is Samuel Thayer. Sam's currently growing our native spcies, pictured below, and, in time, will hopefully have seedlings to share in the hopes of protecting and preserving this special American tree.

Are Mulberries Poisonous?

If identification wasn't confusing enough, there's a handful of warnings of unripe mulberries being poisonous or hallucinogenic. Foraging author Tom Brown's account is probably the most repeated example I see referenced.

All varieties of mulberry are edible and I don't consider them poisonous. While it's fine to eat a few unripe fruit I won't be eating them by the handful.

I don't eat unripe mulberries simply because the unripe fruit is dry and tasteless. That said, there's a few things I think are important to consider here.

• Accounts of narcotic effects I've read refer to eating raw, unripe fruit and not cooked, ripe fruit.
• I may eat around 10 pounds of cooked fruit a year and I've never felt anything out of the ordinary, even after large servings.
• Other anecdotal accounts of mulberry poisoning are often referring to potent extracts of white mulberry leaf.

While the plant may have some medicinal aspects when taken in a medicinal dose, especially raw. In my mind they're harmless, and I agree with Sam Thayer that any danger associated with this fruit is likely over-exaggerated. This tree has been used as a food for a very long time.

When to Harvest Mulberries

Mulberry season in the Upper Midwest is typically Early July and a month or two earlier the farther south you go. Ripe fruit are pure white or purplish-black when ripe, although a little red is ok and common in ripe fruit.

Before you harvest, taste some of the fruit. Ripe mulberries should taste like a combination of raisin and fig with a touch of molasses, but tastes can vary drastically from tree to tree, and some can be near-flavorless.

There's a few different ways to harvest the fruit depending on how much you want. Each method has different pro's and cons to consider.

Harvesting by Hand

Picking the fruit by hand will produce the highest quality fruit with the longest shelf life. It's also the most labor intensive.

Shaking the Tree

Shaking trees to collect the fruit is a method used around the world where the fruit is traditionally eaten. Seeing 5 or ten pounds of food fall from a tree en-masse is an awe-inspiring experience and a foraging skill worth taking the time to learn.

To harvest by shaking the tree, get a friend or group of friends and lay impeccably clean tarps on the ground to cover where the berries will fall. Climb the tree and gently shake the branches to make the ripe fruit fall to the ground. Special thanks to my friend Peter Erik who helped me with the tree shaking for this post.

Another good way to harvest is to throw a rope over low-hanging branches to shake them. It's a good compromise if you're not very skilled at climbing trees like me.

Shaking trees to collect fruit produces the largest harvest, but has its own caveats. Here's some important things to know:

• The bigger the tree, the more fruit it produces.
• In urban areas you'll get fewer stares and inquires about your housing situation if a friend's with you.
• You can throw a rope over low hanging branches instead of climbing.
• Climbing trees can be dangerous. wear tight-fitting shoes and have a friend with you.
• Shaken fruit has a shorter shelf life and needs to be picked clean of debris.
• Chill your fruit as soon as possible to prevent fermentation or mold.
• Mulberries are susceptible to invasive fruit fly larvae that look like tiny white maggots. I think it's the Spotted-Wing Drosophila.
• The fruit ripens unevenly. Make repeated trips to your trees to get the most fruit.

How to Clean Mulberries

Ripe fruit picked by hand will be clean and can be treated like any other fresh berry. Fruit shaken from a tree will need to be cleaned.

The most effective way to clean the fruit I've found is simply laying the berries in a single layer on a baking sheet and picking them over by hand for leaves, twigs and debris.

You may be tempted to wash mulberries that are dirty. Some soak mulberries in water to remove bugs and insects, but this robs them of juices and can result in watery, flavorless fruit, especially if they've been bruised. I prefer to use dirty fruit to make mulberry vinegar or liqueurs that will be strained, like cassis, although jam is an option too.

What to do With Mulberries

Cooking with mulberries is just like blueberries or other juicy, ripe fruit. Jams, jellies and preserves are great. Pie is probably my favorite way to use them.

One question I get regularly is if the stems from fresh mulberries need to be removed before cooking. For the record, the stems are left on the fruit for cooking, and I have never seen a traditional recipe where they're removed. The stems soften after cooking and no one will notice them.

As they can be harvested in such large quantities, people around the world have developed ingenious recipes that can be used for dirty fruit or the juice.

Besides mulberry wine, there's Turkey's pekmez or petimezi, a sort of fruit molasses made by cooking large quantities of fruit to extract a juice.

The juice is simmered until the natural sugar thickens to a molasses-like syrup. It's delicious, like a sweet pomegranate molasses without tartness. I like it with yogurt, fruit, nuts and wild rice for breakfast.

Jam is delicious too, and can be a good use for fruit lacking in taste, making it a good recipe for white mulberries. The tender seeds make it taste reminiscent of fig jam.

Eating Mulberry Leaves

If the fruit wasn't interesting enough, mulberry leaves are edible too. Young leaves harvested when the stems are still green (see the picture below) can be used fresh, dried or added to soups. Sometimes the leaves are taken for supposed health benefits, but I just like the flavor.

A friend of mine likes to mix dried mulberry and persimmon leaves together for a mellow blend. The image below shows the dried leaves in a tea ball above a mug of fresh white mulberry leaf tea.

Harvesting young leaves to cook as a soup vegetable is a novel way to use young weedy saplings. Think less spinach, and more how you would use parsley.

Young leaves have a mild, vegetal flavor and can be simmered until tender in soups and stews, about 4-5 minutes. Older leaves can be fed to chickens and rabbits.

How to Preserve and Store Mulberries

After the harvest you'll need to work fast to clean, process and preserve the fruit. If they're chilled quickly and stored in a refrigerator you'll have a few days to cook and process the fruit.

How to Freeze Mulberries

Like many berries, freezing is the easiest way to preserve the fresh fruit. Once they're frozen they can be cooked as if they were fresh anytime you need.

To freeze mulberries, lay the fruit on a sheet of parchment on a baking tray and freeze solid, then transfer the fruit to a bag or container in the freezer. The frozen fruit can be added directly to recipes, especially mulberry muffins and cake batters.

How to Dehydrate Mulberries

I occasionally see the dried fruit sold coops and some specialty grocery stores. They can be added to smoothies, ground powder for use in baked goods, or rehydrated. I've simmered dried fruit in mulberry juice to improve their flavor when I run out of frozen ones.

To dry the fruit, put the fruit in a dehydrator and dry on the fruit setting (high, around 145 F) until cracker dry, about 24 hours, then store in a jar in a pantry.

Related Posts

• Classic Mulberry Pie
• Easy White Mulberry Jam
• Homemade Mulberry Syrup