All of the people who work in the kitchen with me go out into the forests and on to the beach. It’s a part of their job. If you work with me, you will often be starting your day in the forest or on the shore, because I believe foraging will shape you as a chef.
—Danish chef René Redzepi
Gathering small bits in the wild will not only diversify your diet but will also expand your worldview. Just the act of leaving behind the store and picking a handful of leaves that will grace your table is rewarding and grounding. You must study what you are picking to be sure you have the correct plant, and you must think about stewardship (see Harvest Considerations following).
This section only scratches the surface of what can be wildcrafted and then fermented. Some of the plants we have included grow on the West Coast, and some only on the East. Some of the greens cross the line of weed, turned cultivated. Nettles, lamb’s-quarters, and dandelion greens, for example, are available at many farmers’ markets. Burdock also makes this list; however, since the cultivated root is widely available, we have included it among the garden vegetables under its own heading. The young leaves can be wildcrafted in the spring.
I took a wild-plant walk at a neighboring farm led by a local herbalist. What struck me most on this journey was a conversation about food and our eating habits.
As we walked along the edge between forest and stream, he told us that a nice trail nibble can be a brand-new tender spring leaf of the wild Oregon grape. (For those of you unfamiliar with an Oregon grape leaf, think spiky, tough Christmas holly.) My first thought was okay, good to know, but that will never be a meal. As though reading my mind, our guide said that we need to diversify our diets, as season after season we are eating the same foods. He feels that food allergies are caused by this very thing. Modern agriculture, shipping, and refrigeration have left us with no experience of seasonality in the grocery store. In short, we are no longer forced to eat different foods as they are available during the seasons.
As I drove home, I began to think about how to bring more wild into our meals. . . .
“Uh, Mom, why are there holly leaves in our salad?”
Wildcrafting plants is wonderful when done with care, but often it can lead to overharvesting (admittedly not a problem for common weeds like dandelion or lamb’s-quarters). When using wild plants that are more elusive in a kraut or kimchi, keep in mind that less is more.
As a member of the Native Plant Society, seed farmer and wild gardener Barbara Hughey offers the following harvesting considerations: “When we begin to include wild foraged foods in our menus, there are a few simple things to consider to ensure that those special gifts from nature are protected from overharvesting. The best way to wild harvest responsibly is to only pick what you need. Collect only where the plants are plentiful, and consider how those plants reproduce. If harvesting the whole plant, consider when its seeds are mature so that they may grow again next season. We can gather and scatter the seeds to expand the area where the plants are growing. Doing some commonsense things like this, with plant conservation in mind, can be our way of giving something back each time we take. In this way we can rest assured that those plants will be there to enjoy well into the future.”
Dandelion is a common wild plant found growing along roadsides and in yards and vacant lots. Its name comes from the medieval French dent de lions (lion’s teeth), which refers to the leaves’ jagged edges. The wild dandelion’s Latin name is Taraxacum officinale, to be confused with its distant cousin Chicorium intybus or Italian dandelion, a member of the chicory family, along with radicchio and endive.
One cup of dandelions greens is said to supply 112 percent of the USDA recommended daily allowance of vitamin A and 535 percent of vitamin K. This is all well and good, but the leaf, even when fermented, is still bracingly bitter. We, personally, do not ferment these bitter greens, wild or cultivated, and prefer to eat them sautéed in butter. Our relationship with the wild dandelion has been the closest with the flower: fritters and wine. As for the greens and the root, well, like many plants we know, they are good for us but we don’t often go there.
Dandelions can be found everywhere (like in the sidewalk cracks) but you want to be picky about the location you choose. Dandelions growing in rich soil will have larger leaves and roots. It is most prudent to avoid roadside specimens and only harvest from lawns you are confident have not been sprayed or chemically fertilized in many years.
Early spring is the best time to harvest the leaves; they are the most tender and least bitter before the flower appears. As spring progresses you will want to move from the leaves to flower buds — that is, if you want to make flower bud pickles. The taproot is edible year-round but best when the plant is dormant — late fall to early spring.
If you are purchasing dandelion greens from the market, they are most tender in the early spring or late fall after the frost. Select ones that are vibrant deep green, not wilting or yellowing.
The addition of aromatic herbs to ferments of bitter greens in our experience helps to balance the bitterness; dandelion greens fermented with these herbs are still quite bitter. If we haven’t discouraged you yet, and you want to include dandelion’s digestive-enhancing qualities, add a handful of greens to Naked Kraut or Kimchi. The dandelion’s roots are also a powerful medicinal whose qualities can be enhanced by fermentation.
This combination is just as it sounds — bitter. With this recipe, we leave the realm of the purely culinary and enter the realm of digestive health, a boon to the enjoyment of good food. This recipe comes to us from Nadine Levie, Lac and Chinese herbalist.
To the Naked Kraut recipe add:
yield: about 1 pint
fermentation vessel: 1 quart or larger
technique used: Mastering Brine Pickling
When selecting flower buds to pickle, be sure to pick buds that are still tightly closed, not flowers that have simply closed for the night, which will have bits of petals sticking out. Use these small pickles as you would capers.
Goji berries (Lycium barbarum), also called wolfberries, add bright red polka dots to your ferments. These small crimson berries have received a lot of press in the last decade as a superfood with myriad benefits. They are usually found in stores as dried fruit. Use as you would a raisin in ferments.
This prolific plant (Chenopodium album) can be found all through North America. Chances are you have worked to “weed” it out of your garden — although cultivars of the foraged plant have been developed for the garden and for seed. A distinguishing feature of this highly nutritious green is a grayish powder found beneath the young leaves that gives the greens a silver patina; this powder is innocuous and rinses off easily.
This plant is similar to red orach and spinach; if you like these two greens, you will probably enjoy lamb’s-quarters.
Like dandelion, this green can be found in back alleys, empty lots, and lawns. Choose your harvest site away from roadways and places treated chemically. We allow a few of the volunteers to colonize our garden beds and harvest from those. As with many greens, the younger leaves early in the season are the most tender. For lamb’s-quarters a good rule of thumb is to harvest from plants that are less than a foot tall.
yield: about 3 quarts
fermentation vessel: 1 gallon
technique used: Mastering Sauerkraut
This kraut started out as a little experiment just to see how lamb’s-quarters would behave in the crock — inquiring minds (like our farmer friend Mary with her abundant crop) wanted to know. We made the first batch and took it to market, where it sold out immediately. The next week and the week after we had so many requests that we filled a crock, this time a big one.
There’s a lot to learn about the various types of mushrooms, especially when wildcrafting. We recommend taking a class in your local area to learn the particulars — the types available and in what season, and how to make sure you have the right mushroom. And always play it safe. We know the forest out our back door has many delicious varieties, yet we are only confident in harvesting boletus, chanterelles, and oyster mushrooms in the fall and morels in the spring — with varying degrees of success. We do not ferment mushrooms unless they have been dehydrated.
Fresh wild nettles can be combined with other vegetables in kraut or kimchi. This herb (or green) is so nutritionally valuable it would be worthwhile to ferment it even with dried leaves if that is all you have available. A local herbalist told us that wildcrafted dried nettles are often blackish-green when dried, which he felt was because of the high iron content.
If you are wildcrafting nettles for kraut, they are best in the spring before they have begun to flower. Leave plenty of tops to flower and produce seeds, and work with whatever you can harvest without depleting the supply.
Nettles are fun to work with as they have a dry rustling quality, like crinoline petticoats, when you are chopping them and then massaging them into the cabbage. But be sure to wear gloves when working with them; they will sting.
yield: about 2 quarts
fermentation vessel: 2 quarts or larger
technique used: Mastering Sauerkraut
The nettle quantity in the recipe is variable. Since the leaves reduce in volume so drastically, 1 cup or 3 cups will not make a big difference in the final quantity of kraut. Whether a large or small dose of these healthy greens, the nettles add pleasant flavor that does not overwhelm.
In the fairy tale, newborn Rapunzel is given to the witch to pay for the harvesting of the green ramp that her pregnant mother saw over the garden wall and thought she would die without. The ramp (Allium tricoccum) is called a spring onion or a wild leek. A forest dweller, its green leaves sprout from the bulb before the canopy shades the ground. This early arrival of green after winter’s long hungry spell made it prized. In the Appalachian Mountains, a folk remedy claims ramp’s power to ward off winter’s ills. Ramps, like their cousins in the cultivated onion family, are not only green but high in vitamins and minerals. No doubt this was what Rapunzel’s mother needed.
Onions are an important ingredient worldwide, and it is thought that there were wild onions on every continent. The onion’s reputation has spanned everything from a food to be worshipped, as in Egypt, to places and times where it was considered a food for the poor, as it was too pungent for the gentry. It is a good thing that the wealthy are over that. It is incredibly beneficial in the diet. It was one of the first foods recognized for its medicinal value, across cultures.
Ramps appear early in the spring in the East, from Georgia to Quebec. As one of the first fresh green foods to appear after winter they are a welcome sign and taste of spring. They are also very popular and should be harvested carefully, as the populations have diminished in recent years. Although loosening the ground with a spade or knife allows you to easily lift the whole bulb out, this can affect the patch long term when overharvested. It’s better to harvest the green tops and leave the roots in place. This method does not kill the plant and provides delicious flavor and wild nutrients in your ferment.
Use ramps in place of onions or leeks in any fermented creation — your kimchi becomes Ramp-Chi.
Though watercress is also a cultivated green, it is quite commonly wildcrafted. It is semiaquatic and has a very short shelf life. It has the distinction of being the oldest known leaf vegetable to be consumed by humans. It has been traced back to the Persians and the Greeks and has a venerable reputation throughout Western history. Watercress is a salad green and a medicinal herb. It is said to promote an appetite; because of this quality it finds its way into many traditional kimchi recipes. Use it to infuse into a kraut or kimchi.
Whether you are wildcrafting or buying watercress, it should be long, leafy, and fragrant. The stems should be thick and shiny. You can check the quality of the plant by breaking the stem; if it is older, a thread will show at the break. The peppery quality of the plant varies; mild or spicy is acceptable to use.
yield: about 2 quarts
fermentation vessel: 2 quarts or larger
technique used: Relishes, Chutneys, Salsas, and Fermented Salads
This is a traditional Korean recipe. The gochugaru makes it quite beautiful. It can be fiery or mild, depending on your choice of pepper powder.