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FORAGER | CHEF

Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Spruce Tips: Harvesting, Cooking and Recipes

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Edible white spruce tips

Of all the young growth of Spring, spruce tips occupy a space that’s really interesting and worth getting to know if you love wild food, like I do. Literally the young growth on branches of spruce trees, spruce tips not an herb in the typical sense, but, they are for all intents and purposes. 

Harvesting 

The first thing to know is that all spruce species taste different. Quick aside: I had a great time (sarcasm here) working with some local Amish farmers a few years ago. They’d agreed to sell me spruce tips, but we had to figure out a good tasting species on their property.

Every week for about 3 weeks, they would send me a couple different types of tips from different trees with my vegetable delivery. Eventually we hit on a tasty species before the Spring was officially over, but it took some time.

Spruce Tips, Frozen_

Perfect spruce tips, at this stage you won’t have to remove the paper covering. 

Every young spruce tip I’ve tasted will have a good flavor, but some have intense bitterness too. The goal is to find spruce tips that have the least amount of bitterness or astringency.

No species of spruce is poisonous though, so what you can do is just go around to different trees and taste them until you find one that tastes good.

Spruce and white chocolate terrine

A terrine of spruce and white chocolate is one of many things I’ve made with them over the years.

You’ll want to bring a bottle of water to rinse your mouth out, otherwise after you get a bitter one they might all start to taste the same. When you find a tree that you like the taste of, remember it, and then find other trees that are the same species of spruce.

The only tips I know I really don’t like are balsam fir, although their cones are fun and can be used to make an interesting version of Mugolio. 

Spruce Tips in Sugar

Spruce tips love sugar, and make excellent desserts. 

Quick tips 

Like with many foraged foods, you need to be careful with how you treat the trees. Here’s my rules that I follow when harvesting tips:

  • I always pick from elder, mature trees, young trees need time to grow
  • I never pick more than 20% of the tips from a single tree
  • I never pick tips from the apical meristem, or top of a young tree, which would stunt it’s growth

That being said, spruce tips are one of the most easy to harvest and sustainable things you can forage, and the aforementioned details are relatively minor details as far as sustainability goes.

Even if you tried, it would be hard to pick all the tips from a tree, since only the lower hanging branches are accessible most of the time, unless you have a ladder. Also, spruce tips have a strong flavor, and you don’t need a lot of them to make things, a handful or two will be enough to serve dessert to 10 or more people. 

Harvesting spruce tips with a blickey

Use a blickey (or a milk jug with the top cut off attached to a belt to make harvesting easier. I’ve really liked this one, it’s a Swedish model. 

Species I like 

As I mentioned, each species of spruce tip is going to taste a little different. Some will have a strong citrus note to them, some will taste a bit bitter.

All the types I’ve had have a strong piney-citrus note to them, but some have more of the astringency than others. Let your palette be your guide here. By far, my two favorite species to cook with so far are: 

  • White Spruce (Picea glauca) 
  • Blue Spruce (Picea pungens)
  • Norway Spruce (Picea abies)
edible, mature spruce tips

These tips are a little past prime, but you could still use them for syrup, or pureeing in a blender.

Storage

Spruce tips have a fantastic shelf life. Picked fresh and cooled immediately, they can last for multiple months in the cooler under refrigeration at a restaurant. Home refrigerators dry foods out faster than commercial refrigeration units, so you want to be extra careful to keep them in a damp environment.

I like to store them in a plastic bag with a couple holes punched in it for them to breathe, along with a damp paper towel or two to help hold in moisture. If you’ll be keeping the tips for a month or longer, make sure to change the towel every week or so. Spruce tips can also be frozen, and used for my ice cream and syrup recipe below at the bottom of this post.

Spruce tip panna cotta recipe with wild grape sauce and pistachios

Spruce panna cotta is easy, and delicious. Also, spruce tips LOVE pistachios.

Cooking 

Here’s a few things I find helpful

  • “Cooking” with spruce tips is misleading as I rarely, if ever cook them using heat since they lose their vibrant color. Think of them as an herb you would use raw. When I cook with spruce tips, I usually add them raw to salads or sprinkle over vegetable dishes. 
  • If I use spruce tips in desserts, they will typically be pureed or in an infusion, and always strained if possible since leftover particles can get bitter.
  • Remove the paper covering of any tips before eating, just as you would fiddleheads. 
  • Sure, people make spruce tip salt, breads and cookies and all kinds of stuff. I’ve made them too, and there’s a reason you don’t see recipes for them posted here. You’ll have to search for the flavor in most of the finished products that are cooked and most of the time it’s barely noticeable. 

Safety 

Toxic “look-a-like” Yew tips 

Poisonous yew tips, spruce tip look alike

Yew showing very young growing tips. They share only a passing resemblance to spruce tips.

Generally speaking, conifers are some of the safest edibles I know, but with spruce tips, It would be remiss of me not to mention that you need to be able to differentiate common yew (Taxus spp) from spruce tips. It’s pretty easy.

Yew grows typically  as a low-growing shrub, while spruce tips come from trees. To me, yew doesn’t really resemble spruce tips, but to someone very new to foraging, they could. You’ve been warned. 

Poisonous yew tips, spruce tip look alike

Yew branches, viewed from above.

 
Poisonous yew tips underside, spruce tip look alike

Underside of Yew branches.

Too much Vitamin C

The strong taste of spruce tips should be a deterrent from eating multiple handfuls, but, it is possible for some people to get an upset stomach from eating them, which should (I’m speculating here, chime in if you have concrete examples) be due to the fact that spruce tips are naturally high in Vitamin C.

Fiddlehead, Asparagus Salad with Spruce Tips Violets and Chickweed

A salad of green vegetables and spruce tips is one of my favorite ways to serve them, but you’ll want to serve small amounts of it to start as the spruce tips are raw.

That being said, the tummy rumbles I’ve been notified and experienced myself are only from consuming raw, un-processed spruce tips straight from the tree, and I have never had a problem serving someone a dessert where the tips are pureed in cream, as they are in just about every dessert I make with them. 

Spruce tip posset recipe

Spruce tip posset-an eggless sweet custard.

Cooking 

This was really tricky for me at first. By themselves, spruce tips are aggressively flavored, so a little goes a long way, especially if you have a more aggressive tasting species.

Traditional spruce tip syrup recipe

Classic spruce tip syrup should be one of the first things you make.

For the most part, for me it’s helped to think about them as either one or two flavors: honeydew melon and mint. From there, I just imagine what a dish would taste like if I added one or both of the two. Here’s some examples of flavors spruce tips like be paired with.

Savory

  • Sweet green vegetables, especially peas, fava beans, green chickpeas, asparagus, etc.
  • Radishes, raw lamb, goat, bison, game, etc.
  • Organ meats from all above animals, especially heart and liver
  • Citrus, and anything flavored like citrus, especially lime

Sweets 

  • Berries, especially dark ones like blueberries, serviceberries, aronia, cherries, etc.
  • White chocolate
  • Chocolate, like spruce tip ice cream with chocolate shavings
  • Citrus, and anything flavored like citrus–especially lime
  • Cream, as in ice cream, panna cotta, mousse, etc
  • Nuts, especially creamy ones like pistachios, macadamia, and cashew
Spruce tip ice cream recipe with chokecherry sauce by chef Alan Bergo

Spruce tip ice cream is one of the most popular recipes for spruce tips on this site.

Preservation

There’s really only one way I preserve the tips in their fresh form: frozen. If you strictly want to preserve their flavor, vacuum seal them and freeze, although you can put them in a tightly sealed ziploc too.

Frozen spruce tips regularly sell for 30$ a lb through some wholesalers I know of, so putting a few away for the off season is time well-spent.

Frozen spruce tips have their limits though, and they will not have the soft texture of freshly picked tips. If I’m reaching for frozen spruce tips, I’m probably making ice cream or syrup, or something that will be pureed-not eating raw.

Spruce Tips, Frozen_

Spruce tips freeze like a dream. These were a little older so they’ll be pureed into desserts.

Recipes 

  • Classic Spruce Tip Syrup 
  • Spruce Tip Ice Cream 
  • Winter Radish Salad with Spruce Tips and Spring Vegetables 
  • Spruce Posset 
  • Spruce Panna Cotta 

More Spruce Tips

Edible Spruce Tips
Print Recipe
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Intro to Spruce Tips

A quick intro to spruce tips and different things that can be made with them

Video

 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Monika

    June 14, 2019 at 9:27 am

    This is very exciting! My first time to work with spruce buds. (Just one editing comment: you said that you have 2 rules, but listed 3 🙂

    Reply

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  1. roasted apricot and spruce tip cakes | ten.times.tea says:
    July 30, 2019 at 5:15 pm

    […] it comes to harvesting spruce tips, I found this guide quite handy to make sure that I wasn’t harming the trees: namely, not to harvest more than […]

    Reply

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Alan Bergo
Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Pepin used to make for French president Charles de Gaulle. 

You bake eggs in a ramekin with shrimp topped with creamy morel sauce and eat with toast points. 

Makes for a really special brunch or breakfast. Recipe’s on my site, but it’s even better to watch Jacques make it on you tube. 

#jacquespepin #morels #shrimp #morilles #brunchtime
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
Oh the things I get in the mail. This is my kind Oh the things I get in the mail. 

This is my kind of tip though: a handmade buckskin bag with a note and a handful of bleached snapping turtle claws. 😁😂 

Sent in by Leslie, a reader. 

Smells like woodsmoke and the cat quickly claimed it as her new bed. 

#buckskin #mailsurprise #turtleclaws #thisimylife #cathouse
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