Foraging Q&A with Chef Rob Handel

Chef Rob Handel in a leafy setting

Rob Handel grew up helping his grandmother in the kitchen at The Blackthorne, a resort the family owned in the Catskills. She was a back-to-the-earth child of the ’60s who taught him the joys of fresh ingredients, including foraging, at a very early age. When she passed away he became the head chef, serving 100-150 guests per day at breakfast and dinner. Their tastes were very limited, however; a special of ratatouille flavored with garden herbs came back uneaten. Rob went away to study biology in college but soon realized his true love was cooking. He was chef at Heather Ridge Farms for three years becoming chef at Fin Your Fishmonger, where I tried his foraged dishes at a Sunday Supper. He also teaches cooking and leads occasional foraging walks.

BMF: I feel like I should be foraging, but my results have been terrible. For instance, I gathered some swamp cabbage on a backpacking trip and cooked it for hours and it was tough and inedible. How can the average person approach foraging and have a good time doing it?

RH: In general foraged plants have a stronger taste than domesticated plants. They have to fight it out in the wild, which concentrates the nutrients and flavor. I advise people to use foraged ingredients as a component, rather than a whole meal.

For example, garlic mustard is familiar to many people because it’s invasive. It has a nice garlic flavor but is too bitter for most tastes. So mix a bit of that with a milder herb in a chimichurri or gremolata.

Another issue is texture. Spruce tips, the fresh growth at the end of a spruce branch, have a great citrusy flavor but the texture is not appealing. They’re dry and grassy, not the kind of thing you chop up and add to a salad. So translate the taste to another medium and leave the texture behind. Lots of small breweries are now using evergreen tips instead of hops, for example. You can bury spruce tips in sugar to infuse it with flavor. Or use them to make a flavored vinegar. From that you can make a mayo, mustard or salad dressing. I also do a fermented brew with citrus tips. It has a nice beery flavor when used for soup base or gravy.

BMF: What do you look for in a plant that might be edible? How can I forage without risk of killing myself?

RH: Unfortunately, there are no hard rules about which plants might be edible or not. Folklore says if a mushroom turns black you shouldn’t eat it, but that’s not true. Some plants look poisonous and aren’t; others look benign and aren’t.

The good thing is that most wild plants in beginner books don’t have a toxic lookalike. That’s on purpose. Flip through the book and find something you recognize, dandelion for example. Then delve into each plant individually. Square stem plants are usually relatives of mint and can be used in a similar way in cooking. Most wild things that smell like onion and garlic are edible, like wild chives or onion grass. Pull them out of the ground and see if there’s an instant garlic smell. Wild leeks look similar to lily of the valley, a toxic plant, but the lily doesn’t have a garlic smell.

One of the easiest things to do as a forager is to seek out plants with unique features. Staghorn sumac has distinctive leaves, and cones which are the seeds used in middle eastern cooking. You can identify them by the cones in winter, and a velvety bark like young stag horns. Or wild mustard, brassica. People know it has little yellow flowers so they think any plant with little yellow flowers must be edible. But don’t just pick any yellow flower. Wild mustard has five points on the flowers, look for that.

Facebook has a number of plant identification groups. If you have a question, post a blind picture and ask what readers think it is. If everybody says common dock, then it probably is. You can also take samples to your local Cornell Extension [in New York State]. Take the time to be sure, don’t be flippant. Chanterelles, for example, are well known for their orange hue. But there are also orange mushrooms which are poisonous.

BMF: I used to gather milkweed at the edge of my neighborhood soccer pitch, until the maintenance crew got rid of it. How do you find a good foraging spot?

RH: Most people think of foraging in secluded places, like the woods. But deeply shaded woods actually don’t have enough light for most plants. The edge of a lawn is a great place for wild edibles, if you don’t spray or mow it. So foraging is as easy as walking in your yard. Identify four or five plants you want to eat, and then harvest them at the right time in their growing cycle.

Other than that, your proficiency will grow as you recognize plant habitats. I used to be thrilled when I’d find ramps; now I’ll be driving down the road and I’ll see a spot that looks like it has ramps and I will stop and yep, there they are. Mushrooms show up in the same spots every year, so you find out where those spots are and pick morels or chanterelles when they appear. That’s how professional foragers do it.

BMF: Okay, I’m game. I’ll give foraging another shot. How do I get started?

RH: Keep an eye out for foraging walks by experts in your area, so you’ll learn about wild edible plants that are available locally. I’ve done walks with the Catskill Center where we’ll identify maybe 20 edible plants. The idea isn’t to memorize all of them, but to show you the range that’s available.

There are also a number of excellent books. My personal favorite is Pascal Baudar’s The New Wildcrafted Cuisine,  though that’s about west coast foraging. I like the way he thinks, which is to look for similarities to domestic plants and then incorporate them in cooking. [From the Amazon.com description: “he uses various barks to make smoked vinegars, and combines ants, plants, and insect sugar to brew primitive beers. Stems of aromatic plants are used to make skewers. Selected rocks become grinding stones, griddles, or plates. Even fallen leaves and other natural materials from the forest floor can be utilized to impart a truly local flavor to meats and vegetables, one that captures and expresses the essence of season and place.”]

I learned a lot by taking some classes from John Kallas, who has at least one book. [It’s Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt To Plate, available from Amazon in a Kindle as well as hardcover edition. I bought the Kindle because it’s easy to take into the field, on an iPad so I can see the pictures in color for plant indentification.] He talks about “what is the essence of the plant?” He’ll divide wild edible plants into three or four categories. One is plants that re very mild in taste, another more bitter and so on.

Most libraries will have one or more books on foraging. There’s also free information available online. And it doesn’t cost anything to just go outside and look.

Here are a few additional book titles Rob sent me after we talked. Links are to Amazon.com. Or just look for them in your library.

Foraging and Feasting– Dina Falconi
Northeast Foraging– Leda Meredith
The Joy of Foraging– Gary Lincoff
Ugly Little Greens– Mia Wasilavich

And here are some Facebook groups for plant identification. Typing the name in the search box should bring up the group:

Wild Edibles of The Catskills and Hudson Valley
Foragers Unite!
Hunt Gather Cook
Foraging For Everyone
Foraging and Wild Edibles of The Northeastern US