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Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Small Game

Squirrel still life

Squirrel is a great small game. I also like woodchucks and rabbits. 

Small game, or things like rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks, and others are great eating, and I eat them as often as I can. If you're new here, make sure to see my selection of Rabbit Recipes, as well as off-the beaten path things like Simple Woodchuck Stew.

The Case for Roadkill

dead roadkill pheasant by a car tire

  What I’d invite you to consider today, at least hypothetically, even from a distance, is roadkill, and why it isn’t as taboo or foul as it’s made out to be. Contrary to the jokes and stigma culture would have us believe, eating roadkill is completely safe with a basic knowledge of food safety, and…

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Boneless Rabbit Roulade

boneless rabbit roulade with a green salad

When I worked under the former personal chef to the princess of Monaco, boneless rabbit roulade was one of the dishes on my station. Essentially it’s a roll of rabbit, without bones, stuffed with a slice of prosciutto or other charcuterie that’s cooked and sliced, and served warm or cold. It takes some skill with…

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Buttermilk Fried Rabbit

Deep fried rabbit recipe

I’ve cooked rabbits a lot of different ways over the years, but buttermilk fried rabbit is, without a doubt, a contender for being one of the best rabbit recipes ever. It is everything you know and love about fried chicken, just a tiny bit different. Domestic vs wild  Heck, with the domestic rabbits I used,…

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Tuscan Fettucine with Squirrel Giblets

Here’s a great recipe for an evening after a squirrel or rabbit hunt, especially if you have nice fat grey squirrels around like I do. When I butcher a deer or lamb, I usually save some offal, but, with limited freezer space I do have to pick and choose, and I don’t usually keep every…

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Acorn Crusted Squirrel with Wild Mushroom-Giblet Gravy

Acorn crusted squirrel with wild mushroom-giblet gravy recipe

Acorn crusted squirrel is one of the best things I’ve made with tree ninjas. Period. A few years ago, I had Daniel Vitalis of Wild Fed and his entourage out to film an episode for his show. We took a week to hunt things around Minnesota and Wisconsin, and put everything together for a nice…

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Woodchuck Stew with Garden Vegetables

Groundhog or woodchuck stew with garden vegetables recipe

The giant, beautiful gardens on the farm are home to all kinds of plants and vegetables, and they attract the attention of plenty of critters. If you have a garden that’s ever been visited by a woodchuck, you know they can be very disruptive. How I approach woodchucks is a good example of my approach…

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Rabbit Chasseur with Wild Mushrooms

Braised rabbit with wild mushroom sauce recipe

I planted my first plant ever this year-a squash. Well, I should say that I anger planted squash by scattering them around late in the season after I killed my skirret by planting it on the side of an old road, and not keeping a close enough eye on it. Either way, I think I…

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WildFed: The Pigeon Hunt

Smoked pigeon brochette with sunflower rolls, wild cherry sauce and foraged greens

Pigeons were the first fowl domesticated by man, but we’ve moved a long way from what they used to be: companions used for communication, and sustenance. Only 200 years ago, owning a few breeds of “fancy” pigeons would have been seen as a worthwhile hobby like falconry, as well as fashionable, in the Victorian era….

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Woodchuck Salad with Hickory Nut Oil and Squash

Confit woodchuck salad with hickory nut oil (2)

When I was in Costa Rica I ordered a tuna salad at a little restaurant and throwing the cautionary tales of eating only cooked food to the wind (which I later paid for after drinking a couple drinks with ice) in order to have as big a variety of local food as possible. The salad…

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How to Stuff a Rabbit Saddle

Rabbit saddle stuffed, and wrapped with speck ham

When I get rabbits in, the process starts with butchering and then portioning out into how the orders will be served. At home it’s great to take the whole bunny in pieces and cook it for the family, but if you’re going to sell them to guests, you need to think about attractive-looking portion sizes…

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A Groundhog Stew

woodchuck

Each year I try to cook a new critter, or a part of something I haven’t before. After cooking thousands of pounds of chicken, fish, beef, duck, pork, lamb and all the usual suspects, somewhere along the line I started to crave the knowledge of meat I hadn’t cooked before. This year I had planned…

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Hunting Squirrels with Madison Parker

“Always take the crazy journey” is something my Father says, and is one of the most important pieces of advice I’ve learned from him. Life has been a roller coaster the last few years, but through all the work I have managed to sneak in some fun. My favorite encounter work was work related, but…

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How To Cook a Peacock

peacock feather

Bucket list foods, everyone has them. There’s a number of them still on mine, but a little while ago I got to scratch peacock off the list. My girlfriends mother build a farm community in Wisconsin in the 70’s and is still very much plugged in to the local scene. She knows who grows which…

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🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
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