Foraging For Fresh Food: A Beginners' Guide

Where does your food come from? If your answer is "from the supermarket", but you crave fresh home-made food and would like to spend more time in nature, it may be time to discover the joys of foraging. What do you need to know before you start, what produce is generally readily available, and what can you do with it?

Before You Start...

Before you start foraging, you'll want to grab a book about local plant life — wild flowers, fruits, nuts, roots, mushrooms, and herbs. People who already have extensive plant knowledge may want to skip this step, but knowing what plants you have around your neighborhood, and being able to tell edible plants from poisonous ones is a real bonus.

Here are some general tips:

• Aim to become very familiar with the vegetation in your neighborhood, starting with your own garden if you have one. What are the names of the plants, trees, bushes, and mushrooms you have around? Which ones are edible? Which ones are dangerous? When do they grow? 
• Commit yourself to never taking all vegetation from a certain patch — not only do you want to make sure you leave enough for renewal so you have enough for next season, you also want to leave enough for birds and other animals.
• Do not litter while you are out foraging, and take care not to do damage to soil and vegetation by stamping around like a Dinosaur.  

Some attributes you may want to get your hands on before you start foraging include a pair of garden gloves, a pair of clippers, kitchen scissors, a knife, a basket or a bucket, a trowel, in some cases a ladder, and I often take a walking stick with me to pull down branches.

It is very important that you don't forage next to motorways or in places where the produce you may find is likely to be very polluted or sprayed with chemicals. You also want to avoid foraging in public parks. There may be scrumptious dandelions and stuff, but they are likely to be contaminated with dog pee and even poo. Furthermore, you'll want to to check you're not accidentally trespassing. If you do decide to enter a private area, ask permission first. Sometimes, people will love it if you get rid of their "weeds" for free — you can even ask if they would like a jar of your home-made produce afterwards. All in all, though, it's usually best to go foraging at nature reserves, though again you'll want to make sure it's allowed. 

See Also: How To Make Your Own Elder Flower Wine

Your own finished products will taste unlike anything you will ever find in a supermarket, and if you put your stuff in cute jars, it will make awesome gifts for your friends and acquaintances. 

Foraging: What You Can Pick, And How To Prepare It

One More Note Before You Begin

Once you have collected some foraged goodies, make sure you wash them thoroughly before using them in meals. Inspect everything, and if you're in doubt about the condition or whether you've got the right plant, discard it. Avoid the temptation to make a feast from foraged goods only, and instead begin adding only one foraged species per meal. That way, if you have a bad reaction, you can be pretty sure what caused it and can avoid that thing in the future.

What You Can Pick

I live in Europe, but my all-time favorites are also likely to be somewhere in your neighborhood if you're from North America. Great things beginners can forage for include:

• Dandelions
• Ground elder
• Chickweed
• Wild garlic
• Elderflower and elderberries (not at the same time obviously)
• Japanese knotweed
• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Wild strawberries
• Crab apples
• Hawthorn berries and flowers
• Sloe plums
• Rosehip
• Hazelnuts
• Chestnuts
• Burdock root
• Stinging nettles
• There's all kinds of mushrooms, but I'd keep away because they're hard to differentiate

What You Can Do With It

Once you're sure what you can and can't eat, looking up nice recipes on the internet is as easy as pie. To get you started though, here are some of my favorite recipes. 

Ground elder pesto tastes fantastic. Use two cups of fresh ground elder leaves. Remember to keep it fresh. Did I mention fresh? You'll need a half a cup of grated Parmesan cheese, two (big) cloves or garlic, freshly ground pepper and sea salt, half a cup of nuts of your choice (pick from: almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, or pecan) and extra virgin olive oil. You wash the elder, obviously, and you take all the hard bits off. Then you dry them gently. Fling everything apart from the oil into a food processor. Slowly add your olive oil. Use a sterilized (boiled) jar and enjoy! This pesto can also be frozen very well. You can double or triple the ingredients to make bigger batches. 

Stinging nettle beer is another great experiment. Making your own beer may sound intimidating, but it's actually quite easy and this one isn't very alcoholic either. Go for crisp young leaves. You may want to get your garden gloves out. Pick 100 nettle stalks, including leaves. You need 12 liters of water and a very large saucepan, as well as 1.5 kilos of sugar, 50 grams of cream of tartar, and 15 grams of dried yeast from a package. You do need a clean bucket as well. 

Put the nettles and the water in a very large saucepan. Boil for 15 minutes. Sieve it all through to a sterilized bucket. Throw your nettles onto your compost heap, and put the liquid back into the saucepan. Add the sugar and cream of tartar, and heat it until everything is well dissolved. Then you let your mixture cool down until it reaches room temperature. Place everything back into your clean bucket, add the yeast, mix well, and cover with cheesecloth or a clean tea towel. Leave for 24 hours. Remove the scum from the top, and siphon it into clean, sterilized bottles with a screw top. Leave the sediment alone. You can drink after four days. If you leave the bottles too long, you need to open them to let some of the fizz out. It is lovely on a warm summer's day and it goes well with a leaf of mint and a cube of ice. 

See Also: Ten Healthy Herbs To Grow At Home

Blackberry vinegar makes a nice addition to any salad. It's also nice on pudding and good to gurgle with if you have a sore throat. What you need is 1.5 kilos of blackberries, one kilo of sugar, and two liters of vinegar. You put the blackberries in a small bucket or a pot, after cleaning them obviously, and pour the vinegar over the top. Let it stand for three days, stirring occasionally. Them you strain off the liquid, add the sugar, and boil for 10 minutes. Bottle your vinegar (into sterilized bottles), and that's it. Easy, right? And it is really tasty.