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Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Hedgehogs

Mushroom Fricasee Fredy Girardet

Fricasee of chanterelles, porcini, lobster mushrooms, and laccaria recipe

Old cookbooks are a wealth of knowledge. Back in the day, it didn’t matter how many art directors were on set for the photo shoot, and how many different plate props you had, good food was just good food. One of my favorite old books is Fredy Girardet, a famous Swiss chef who reached the…

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Kernza Salad with Butternuts and Mushrooms

Kernza Salad Recipe with Preserved Mushrooms and Bergamot (6)

Kernza, a crop being researched by the land institute in the University of Minnesota is a potentially groundbreaking game changing grain. Most grains, like wheat, corn and soy beans, need to be planted as an annual. Kernza is the opposite, a perennial grain that needs no planting, no tilling, and, because of that, actually replenishes…

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Giant Hedgehog Mushrooms: “Spreaders”

Spreader hedgehog mushrooms

I used to think that hedgehog mushrooms were kind of a novelty here in Minnesota and the Midwest, I would only see a handful here and there where I pick chanterelles but never a ton, maybe a pound on a really good hunt and that’s if I was lucky. Usually they get lumped in with…

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Pan Roasted Chicken Breast with Duxelles Sauce

Pan roasted chicken breast with crispy skin and wild mushroom duxelles sauce

  You had a  great mushroom hunting season, you crushed the chanterelles, boletes, and all the mushrooms you wanted to get. You made duxelles, and put some in the freezer for a rainy day in the off-season. Great, but now what do you do with the duxelles? Duxelles in stuffings and such is great, but…

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Vegetable Confit with Hedgehog Mushrooms

Vegetable Confit With Hedgehog Mushrooms

With the restaurant menu that changes all the time and small amounts of cooler space that might have 20 different people go in them a day, one of the most important functions of my job is the careful organization of coolers, and proper delegation to employees of what I want done with things in order…

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Winter Greens With Lentils, Chicken Heart Confit and Hedgehog Mushrooms

wilted greens with chicken heart confit, lentils, and pickled hedgehog mushroooms

As the head of purchasing for the restaurant I have plenty of local purveyors I buy food from but there’s one that stands out from the others. He isn’t technically local, but he might as well be. His name is George Weppler, and in the Twin Cities there’s plenty of restaurants that would like to…

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Chanterelle Custard / Pot du Creme

Chanterelle custard with hedgehog mushrooms_-41

Our chanterelles in the Midwest are delicious, in my opinion much more than the variety that I see coming in from the Pacific Northwest. The P.N.W chanterelle I’m familiar with I suspect to be one cantharellus formosus, it turns brown after pickling, where our chanterelles will stay golden, it’s flavor is also less intense, less…

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Fresh Wild Mushroom Duxelles

Chanterelle mushroom duxelles

The one and only mushroom duxelles. This is one of the oldest, most traditional, and especially useful recipes for preserving mushrooms there is along with simply drying, and mushroom catsup/ketchup. At it’s heart its really just a finely chopped, concentrated mushroom base-nothing too crazy. It’s a lot more though. Duxelles is a mother ingredient, one…

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Wild Mushroom Conserve (Pickled Mushrooms)

Chanterelle Mushroom Conserve

There really is no substitute for fresh mushrooms in everyday cooking, but we can get pretty close. Of course they can always be pickled for long term storage, but there’s another method, almost in between a pickle and a marinade: the almighty conserve. Think of it as the best pickled mushroom you’ve ever had. Seriously….

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Hedgehog Mushrooms

wild edible hedgehog mushrooms

Hedgehogs are a great all around mushroom. They’re cousins of chanterelles, and to me are a little under appreciated. They seem to get overshadowed by the more widely available golden chanterelles, since they fruit at around the same time. They’re really great though, even easier than chanterelles to identify and a breeze to cook. The…

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foragerchef

Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, the roadkill is t Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, the 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
Hackberry milk spoonbread with black walnuts and c Hackberry milk spoonbread with black walnuts and chokecherry gastrique is one of the dishes @credononfiction and I filmed for @headspace. 

I cook hackberry milk with cornmeal and maple syrup, whip some egg whites and fold them in, then bake. Eats a bit like crust-less pumpkin pie, if pumpkin pie came from a tree. 

#hackberry #souffle #wildfoodlove #chokecherry #blackwalnuts #brunching
Hackberry milk is a sort of rustic nut milk made f Hackberry milk is a sort of rustic nut milk made from ground hackberries and water. I grind the berries to a meal, then simmer with 3x their volume of water, strain through a chinois (without pressing) season with maple and a pinch of cinnamon. Tastes like pumpkin pie in a glass, also a decent cooking medium. 

#hackberries #nutmilk #foraging #wildfoodlove #celtisoccidentalis
Are hackberries a fruit? A nut? They're a bit of b Are hackberries a fruit? A nut? They're a bit of both. They also contain protein, fat, and carbs, and the oldest evidence of humans enjoying them goes back 500,000 years. Right now is the best time to harvest them in the Midwest as the leaves have fallen. The full break down and introduction to them is in my bio. 
#hackberry #celtisoccidentalis #winterforaging #wildfoodlove #traditionalfoods #manbird
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