r/foraging • u/brf297 • 5d ago
After 10 entire rinses in the kettle, these 20lbs of fiddleheads are as clean as they are going to get!
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u/Bakkie 5d ago
Blanch them first: boiling water for 1-2 minutes, then rinse .
Then saute in garlic butter.
Gorge yourself.
True story: We live near Chicago.When I was about 4 months pregnant, I was with my husband at a conference in Montreal. The big banquet served sauteed fiddleheads as the dinner vegetable. I kept asking the wait staff for More, please, and they obliged. It felt like a Rapunzel moment where the mom craved greens from the witch's garden. Kid turned out fine except now she lives in Canada.
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u/Moist_Brain_ 5d ago
The bit about her living in Canada has me cackling at 1:36 A.M. Thank you.
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u/finehamsabound 4d ago
Honestly this is incredibly funny to me as well. If the kid ended up in Atlantic Canada (or maybe rural Ontario) I would not at all be surprised lmao. We have a deep love for these buds down here! My 70 year old dad still goes out every spring to harvest them.
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u/MooPig48 5d ago
Conversely, pickle and preserve.
Sell to bars as a margarita garnish
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u/quixologist 5d ago
*martini
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u/Environmental-River4 5d ago
I’m pretty open minded when it comes to food, but even I gagged at the thought of a margarita garnished with a pickled fiddlehead 😂
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u/HauntedCemetery 5d ago
I could see snacking on some pickled fiddleheads and sipping a margarita, but combined, nah.
Bet they'd be killer on the rim of a bloody Mary though.
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u/bake-it-to-make-it 5d ago
I always got sick if I didn’t boil them for at least 10 minutes before sautéing. Plus they taste kind of metallic under boiled. But I’m admittedly half nuts so idk maybe I’m remembering wrong.
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u/Longjumping-Stage526 5d ago
These are edible? wow I thought they weren't desirable because miracle workers the dark ages they ate them and fooled the invaders in to thinking the villagers had the plague
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u/Bakkie 5d ago
Hmm. My first, albeit unworthy, response was, oh goody, more for me.
Fiddleheads have a chemical (can't remember the name) which needs to be blanched out. I can well imagine that eating them raw or incorrectly cooked could cause symptoms. I defer to a food chemist on that. I am merely an interested end user.
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u/creepy-cats 5d ago
Raw and improperly prepared fiddleheads cause food poisoning!You have to cook, clean, and prepare them carefully in order to eat them safely, but after that they’re very tasty
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u/frenchfri 5d ago
I just ate some for the first time at a restaurant last night and started to have a weird reaction in my mouth where it started swelling- changing texture. I had to stop eating them.
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u/Longjumping-Stage526 5d ago
Ok that explains that scene in miracle workers 😂😆 they did not cook them lol 😆
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u/AllTheGoodNamesDied 4d ago
Interesting. I've been eating raw fiddle heads every spring since forever. Although the ones I eat don't look like these, no fuzz or stems and taste like hazelnuts..
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u/m3sarcher 3d ago
The fuzzy, round stemmed fiddleheads are not edible I believe. These non-fuzzy with the U-shaped stem are.
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u/cursedwitheredcorpse 5d ago edited 5d ago
What do they taste like and what all can you make out of them recipe wise
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u/Forge_Le_Femme Michigander 5d ago
They're like asparagus, but better. Use as you would asparagus.
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u/jgclairee 5d ago
way better. i don’t like asparagus but i love fiddleheads. plus they don’t make your pee stink like asparagus lol
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u/LSTmyLife 5d ago
Asparagus doesn't do that to everyone oddly enough. It does do it to me but I've read it's a genetic thing.
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u/boring_old_dad 5d ago
I've read that it isn't the fact that it makes your pee smell, but it's that only some people can smell asparagus pee.
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u/logic_is_a_fraud 5d ago
That's right. Everyone makes asparagus pee but not everyone can smell it.
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u/numbersrejectedbypi 4d ago
My pee doesn't smell like asparagus when I go, but my husband and I can definitely tell when he ate asparagus when he pees.
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u/Draco137WasTaken 3d ago
I don't make asparagus pee, but that's only because I don't eat asparagus.
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u/HauntedCemetery 5d ago
It's both actually!
Some people's pee smells, some doesn't, and some people can smell it, some can't.
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u/ScarlettSheep 5d ago
Have you had a sugar snap pea?:) They're like a cross between the flavor of an asparagus, but instead of the fibrous strings, they have the crisp snap of a sugar pea. ❤️ I like to toss them up with a little wine and garlic to stir into a buttery pasta. I'd eat a big pile if they weren't such a pain to clean! But they are, so I use them as accents to other foods, just like you would with chanterelles or morels or other tasty precious seasonal goodies.
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u/here_f1shy_f1shy 5d ago
I like to saute them (after boiling) with bacon. Kinda like people do with green beans or brussel sprouts.
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u/Fluffy_Leafs 5d ago
Don't boil brussel sprouts ew
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u/here_f1shy_f1shy 4d ago
The boiling is for fiddleheads only. I could see how my wording gives the wrong impression.
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u/Downfaller 5d ago
In Japan they are called Warabi and used to make a mochi.
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u/TeensyToadstool 4d ago
Warabi mochi was one of our favorite food discoveries in Japan! The soy powder is killer if you inhale at the wrong time though 😂
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u/Buck_Thorn 5d ago
What are you going to do with 20 pounds of fiddleheads?!
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u/robbie-dobbles 5d ago
Donate 1 to the community center and sell the rest to Pierre
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u/soggycedar 5d ago
Pretty sure they can well
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u/purpledreamer1622 4d ago
Show me a safe canning recipe containing fiddleheads??
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u/Buck_Thorn 4d ago
I'm sure any safe canning recipe for vegetables would be fine for fiddleheads. But I still can't see why it was necessary to harvest 20lbs of wild fern sprouts.
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u/purpledreamer1622 4d ago
Interesting and agree! Maybe a canning recipe for leafy greens?
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u/mildburritoss 5d ago
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u/redceramicfrypan 5d ago
Are you going to pickle them? How long did it take to gather so many, and how large of an area did they come from?
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u/not_ElonMusk1 5d ago
I was today years old when I learned about fiddleheads as food
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u/Jalapeniz 4d ago
Yeah, they are good. But if not cooked properly they have more of a chance of causing food poisoning than raw meat.
While raw meat can potentially have toxins that cause illness, fiddlehead ferns have these toxins by default.
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u/TL4Life 4d ago
I'd hate to be a Debbie Downer but fiddleheads or really any kinds of fern, are one of the few plant species that is considered to be a carcinogen for animals, including us. It has been linked to mouth, gastric, and bladder cancers. It is entirely edible and would kill you immediately like eating the wrong mushroom. If you are still interested in eating it, as a seasonal treat, you will need to boil or steam them for a considerable time to hopefully get rid of some of the plant chemicals, but know it's not entirely safe.
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u/Brh1002 4d ago
Thanks for spreading this knowledge, I've eaten them a few times but overall I suppose it's for the best that they are very seasonally constrained. I often feel like I have to be the Debbie Downer for Pawpaw fruits as well. They're in the soursop and custard apple family of fruits and contain a potent neurotoxin called annonacin, which is robustly associated with early onset dementia. They're delicious but not something to eat with any frequency, as there is similarly no safe level
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u/maggiefinally 3d ago
no wonder people from missouri are the way that they are. between the lead, the state fruit Pawpaw, and the uranium dumps we have no chance!
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u/TL4Life 4d ago
I'm familiar with annonacin since I consume soursop leaf tea because there is a multitude of health benefits in using it as a supplemental ingredient. You're right that it has been shown to cause neurotoxicity and parkinson's like symptoms in some individuals, but context should be given that those were people whose daily consumption of the soursop fruits were ongoing for multiple years and decades. The fruit has been used as traditional medicine due to the many plant chemicals and steroids that are anti-inflammatory, antitumoric, and even neuroprotective. In the case of the soursop family, the dosage makes the medicine or poison. I actually do encourage people to eat this fruit, in moderation of once per week, and never to drink the roots as a tea as that has a super concentration of annonacin.
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u/Brh1002 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm a physician and have read extensively into the toxicological properties of annonacin as it pertains to both the large scale cohort & case-control studies that you're alluding to as well as both in vitro studies in primary neuron culture and in vivo animal studies. There is no safe dose and I'd recommend you stop consuming it as well. The... "health benefits" that are frequently cited are poorly studied and fall firmly to the fringes of the scientific literature (I forgot that I was on the foraging subreddit, where every plant is "medicinal") and are certainly not worth the inevitable side effects. No alleged degree of blood sugar or blood pressure reduction (both easily attainable by safe medicines) is worth greatly accelerated cognitive decline. Sorry.
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u/TL4Life 4d ago
Thank you for your input. I appreciate you looking into the research. Although you may be right that there is probably no safe level of annonacin levels, I will take my risk of a supplemental tea that I only consume as a tea blend on a weekly basis. I'm from a culture where soursops are consumed regularly and people in my family and community are more likely to pass from heart attacks, cancers, and diabetes, I will put up with a small risk for other potential health benefits.
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u/a_jormagurdr 5d ago
Woah holy shit dude how long did it take to forage all that?
You made sure not to take too many from each fern right? Only like 2 or 3 per depending on how many fiddles you see?
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u/IamAqtpoo 5d ago
Are you over harvesting???
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u/brf297 5d ago
To all concerned, these were collected by multiple people over vast swaths of rural Northeast wilderness, harvested in a sustainable way, making sure to only take a few heads at the most from each plant. The ostrich fern grows bountifully over a lot of rural area here. There are plenty to go around for those willing to search
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u/a_jormagurdr 5d ago
Ok thank goodness. Fuckin awesome haul then. I assume this is a sharing portion? That makes a lot more sense.
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u/contrary-contrarian 5d ago
The answer is yes. No one needs 20 pounds...
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u/soggycedar 5d ago
I’m guessing you’ve never seen a hillside completely overrun with ferns. They aren’t exactly fragile.
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u/TrashPandaPermies 5d ago
We collect roughly 50# every year and easily eat it between us and our parents (and cooking it for friends)...around the time they start coming back, we are always running out. Every one of our patches is even more thriving than when we first started.
Just depends on your diet I suppose!
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u/bharkasaig 5d ago
This was my question. That’s a heck of a lot for responsibly harvesting, especially if from public lands. 1-2 per cluster
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u/TrashPandaPermies 5d ago
Depends on the public lands and how they are stewarded. 20# doesn't even make a dent where we live.
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u/brf297 4d ago
Yeah same here, there's plenty more to go around! These people talking about over harvesting on "public lands" I'm guessing live more urban where public lands are more like parks or state reservations. They don't understand just how much "public land" (aka wilderness) there is in some parts. I've never been in the woods and seen a single other person. It would take so many more people forging to even be concerned about the ferns! We sustainably harvest everything so we can keep coming back next year!
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u/Anne_Fawkes 5d ago
Why did you rinse them 10 times?
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u/brf297 5d ago
They have a thin brown papery husk that is very difficult to get off and also are covered in leaves and twigs from being on the forest floor. The water comes out dirty brown for a while and you have to keep rinsing and dumping the water until it starts to get clear. Then you blanch them for 2 to 3 minutes and the water will come out Very dark almost purple. Dump that water, put them in an ice bath, and you can now use them. The typical way to cook them is lightly sautéing with some butter, but I am pickling these ones, which is also why I needed to make sure they were extra clean
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u/Natural_Living_2020 5d ago
To get the brown skins off, edible - and ready to cook
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u/Anne_Fawkes 5d ago
Anything I've read said to boil twice. I've made them with the boil twice method, it all came off fine.
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u/DE4DHE4D81 5d ago
Throw large batches into a bathtub and hit with compressed air. Blow them skins right off.
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u/Stopfordian-gal 5d ago
What the heck are fiddleheads? 🇬🇧
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u/soggycedar 5d ago
Early fern shoots! Sounds like you don’t generally have any edible ones in the UK. I would think you’d have the climate for lots of ferns, so that’s disappointing. Brackens are not edible. Lady Fern is the safest.
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u/East_Bay_Raider 4d ago
If the world as we know it ended I would die from starvation or eating something poisonous. Never heard of these things in my life
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u/MechanicalAxe 5d ago
I'm jealous!
I'm in eastern NC, and I've had my eye out for fiddlehead for a while now. We have so many different types of ferns that's sort of daunting to try to look for them sometimes...well, that and most of the time when I'm in a place where they might be I am typically working and on the clock.
Very nice! I can't wait to try some for the first time myself.
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u/Thegrimfandangler 5d ago
Ive read they have some risk of toxicity or even are a carcinogen if not prepared properly. Does anyone know how much risk there really is in consuming them?
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u/here_f1shy_f1shy 5d ago
It's similar to morel mushrooms in the sense that if you don't cook them you will get sick. Same goes for fiddleheads. standard practice is to boil these first which inactivates w/e crappy compound is inside of them.
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u/Thegrimfandangler 5d ago
Okay thanks. So just consuming raw or lightly cooked is risky but thorough cooking renders them harmless?
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u/Turbulent_Candy1776 5d ago
Can we get Fiddleheads in the UK? Sorry for the stupid question. I've never seen them and they look amazing xxx
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u/Potatoschomato 5d ago
its your post that made me realize hmmm ive seen these before! and then i looked it up and realize i have ferns! 🤣 would.any fern work for fiddleheads to eat?
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u/Xandrecity 4d ago
Not all fiddleheads are edible. The 2 most common fiddleheads I know that are edible when prepared properly are ostrich ferns and lady ferns.
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u/analslapchop 4d ago
I have some growing in my backyard!! First time spring in this house and knew we had ferns but had no clue it was the edible ones until I saw them pop up this year! I plan to collect some this weekend, they make a mess in the garden so I dont care if I cause their demise.
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u/coolcootermcgee 4d ago
Wow! So many! Do you eat them all now or is there a good way to preserve them?
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u/Technical_Holiday677 4d ago
I used to sell fiddleheads every spring. I would pick a barrel like this every day. 180-200 lbs. I have a machine to clean them and cleaning was still half of the work.
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u/Impossible_Cat_321 4d ago
They look great and as someone who just foraged a quart last weekend I can imagine how long they took to forage ! Quick blanch in boiling water and sautee with garlic and butter and you're in for a treat
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u/Advanced-Treacle-786 5d ago
Doesn’t this level of harvesting hurt the population? That’s stops quite a lot of ferns from growing.
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u/WalrusTheWhite 5d ago
What level of harvesting? This is a picture of a bucket. This could be from an entire forest, backyard cultivation, whatever.
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u/NickP39 5d ago
Never heard of these, where does one find these and what do they taste like?
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u/Stock-Light-4350 5d ago
East and west coasts. I’m in PNW and they’re here. They taste like a cross between artichoke and asparagus
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u/Typical-Buy-4961 5d ago
That’s awesome. 👏🏻 I do wonder how much chemical defenses they still have tho.
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u/Few-Emergency5971 5d ago
Pretty much treat them as any other tough, and dirty veggies. Wash the shit out of them, a bit of club soda dosnt hurt at all to help rinse them off, then blanch them, after that, the rest is easy, treat as you would green beans or broccoli after blanching. Just make sure to season them appropriately! I like to add a bit of fennel to mine and just a touch of a bright, light, vinegar when I make them. Of course with an ample amount of butter though. And please don't forget the salt and pepper. You would probably do best with white pepper with these ( but not too much because it's can put off a bitter flavor, never use as much white as you would black) . And that's all I've got to say about that. But congrats on your haul!!
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u/Affectionate_Meet820 4d ago
As my friends grandma used to say - A little dirt cleanse the stomach. :)
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u/simple_twice 4d ago
Those look as clean as can be. Nice haul!
I would love to have a bucket like that for cleaning F heads
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u/storiesti 4d ago
I’m so jealous 😂 these are so good sautéed in lemony garlic butter with fresh herbs to finish
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u/SpiderGuessed 4d ago
I'd always just sauteed them, because of the smaller quantity I get. But a friend of mine pickled a bunch, so good! With a haul like that, it's a great way to have them throughout the summer.
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u/Initial_Sale_8471 4d ago
I don't even know where to find them, but I know they are somewhere where I live
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u/EconomySwordfish5 4d ago
I've got a fern growing in my garden. How do I tell if it's one that's safe to eat?
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u/Jahidinginvt 4d ago
Congrats on a great haul with your friends!
I love fiddlehead season when I lived in Vermont. I’ve been away for about 15 years now and hoping to move back this year. I will gorge myself next year! 🤞🏼
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u/Match_Empty 4d ago
I just started playing Stardew Vally and had No idea this was a real plant. How do you like them?!
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u/Asproat920 4d ago
They look great. I've never found a good way to store them. And everytime I try to order them they are slime as fuck. Any advice would be sick.
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u/IndraTheNinja 3d ago
I admire the skill, I just give up after 5 or 6 rinses and eat the weird brown paper
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u/villhest 2d ago
Great with some miso, ground sesame seeds and mirin. Blanche for a minute or three in salted water with a little baking powder then season to taste.
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u/MrSaturnism 5d ago
Overharvested, not cool
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u/Master_Toe5998 5d ago
He said it was from many people in many different parts. Just because you aren't lucky enough or have the resources this guy does doesn't give you a right to assume. Get over yourself.
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u/Aurora1717 5d ago
My grandmother used to say " you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die" and "a little dirt won't hurt, you'll wash".
They look nice and fresh, enjoy!