Kayte Young

From WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, I'm Kayte Young, and this is Earth Eats.

00:00:11:19

Rose Harding

I've been mushroom hunting before, and you'll, like, kind of squat down and look in between all of the low plants and then you move to the other side and you look on the other side. And all of a sudden, you see, like, four and they're right there.

Kayte Young

This week, it's part three of our special series Earth Eats Eats Wild. A nine-part seasonal special all about foraging for wild food. We couldn't wrap up our spring season without a morel hunt, where we share secrets that might help you spot a few of the elusive fungi this year. And we talk with the Forager chef Alan Bergo about what it's like to eat a pine tree. That's all just ahead. Stay with us. 00:00:56:05

Thanks for listening to Earth Eats, I'm Kate Young. This is the third installation of our special foraging series Earth Eats Eats Wild. When most people think of spring foraging in the Midwest, one image usually pops into our minds: morels. Morel mushrooms are the delicacy of the deciduous forest. Strange and rare, surrounded by mystery and lore, and many experienced foragers confess to not having much luck finding them.

00:01:35:15
While some claim to have a formula for spotting morels, particular temperatures, co-existing species, including specific trees, reptiles and so on, my experience is there's no rhyme or reason to finding them, at least when it comes down to the specific details of locating a patch. Sure, there's a time of year when you're likely to find them, but the best indicator of whether or not you will get lucky in your hunt is if you have found them before in the location where you were searching. 
I usually go mushroom hunting at least once every spring, and even if I don't find any or just find one or two, I always enjoy being out in the woods in early spring. On a warm day in April of 2024, Iheaded out to the Hoosier National Forest with Rose Harding. She lives on the edge of the woods and has a lot of experience hunting for mushrooms of all types.

00:02:40:22

Rose Harding

My name is Rose Harding. My pronouns are she/her, and I am a hobby mushroom hunter. Normally, when I'm looking for morels, I just will go to places where I've seen them before. And then sometimes I'll see them, sometimes I won't. A good season for me would be like if I find five. But yeah, let's do it. I think we'll walk this way, it'll be a little easier. We're headed over there. 00:03:09:04
You always would know to start looking for morels as it's starting to get, like, a little bit warmer, but not, like, super hot just yet. My identifier is when I see the mayapples are coming up and spreading out their leaves. I think that's like a good indicator of the temperature in the soil is right, the temperature above the soil is right, and we've also had quite a bit of rain and warmth.
00:03:35:14
So those two things together told me it's time to start going and looking for mushrooms because they're going to be out. Some kind of mushroom will be out, even if it's not morels, but something will be coming up because those conditions are just what they want. We'll follow this deer trail back here. We have so many of these Dutchman's breeches, which are just beautiful, aren't they? They're the coolest flower ever.

00:03:59:06

Kayte Young

Why do you think it's called Dutchman's breeches?

00:04:01:20

Rose Harding

Because they kind of look like upside down puffy pants. You know, I always wish that someone would, like, make pants that looked just like this. Yeah, they're so cool. And they have these lacy leaves. They're all in the poppy family, so if you know California poppy, they have, like, the same leaf shape as California poppy. And then if you dig just below the soil too, you can usually find these pink tubers

And that is like their storage.

00:04:29:17

Kayte Young

Wow, they are really pretty. I've never seen just like this many all at once. Oh, they're so pretty.

00:04:35:12

Rose Harding

Yeah, this kind of lush time is one of my favorite things, too, where everything is just starting to come up. It just always looks so, like, verdant and, like, glowy in the morning or in the evening. It's really wonderful. We'll go this way. It's a little more clear.

00:04:56:00

Kayte Young

Are there specific trees that you're looking for?

00:04:59:16

Rose Harding

Usually, I look for hardwoods, but a lot of the time I'll be looking for a hardwood tree that's injured and dying, but not fully dead. Like the bark's not coming off. Because most often that's where I found them, is under those conditions. But I think morels have this kind of mystery about them where they can grow anywhere if the conditions are right. But then because of that, it's so vast and diverse and they're hard to see, you want to like create find a pattern.

00:05:31:18
And so a lot of people who I talk to about it will be like, yeah, I always look for like a tree that's broken from the top or something, or I always look only under elms or something like that. But the tree we're approaching right now is a black walnut, and I've seen them under there before. We'll see if they're there this year. But that's usually what I'm looking for, something that's injured or dying.
00:05:52:12
Oftentimes I'll be looking up, looking for a tree that looks a little bit dead, and I'll check it out under there. And then a lot of the time I'm also looking down on the ground for something that seems a little bit more lush. And it is like sort of holding water but not wet.

00:06:11:20

Kayte Young

We hadn't been walking for five minutes before Rose spotted one. Oh my, that was so fast.

00:06:22:20

Rose Harding

Yeah, that was a surprise. Yeah. So I guess this is the luck of, like, coming back to a place where you know you found them before, and then it just is looking for them. I've been mushroom hunting before and you'll, like, kind of squat down and look in between all of the low plants. And then you move to the other side and you look on the other side and all of a sudden you see like four and they're right there.

00:06:47:09

Kayte Young

That has been my experience, too, that you realize when you see one that you've been looking at it for a while.

00:06:54:05

Rose Harding

Yes, totally. And then to harvest, I am gonna have my mushroom knife. It's in just a regular, like, sharp knife, and then I'll just cut low to the base.

00:07:06:28

Kayte Young

Awesome. All right. Well, then, now we can just relax because we know we found one.

00:07:11:22

Rose Harding

Yeah, we're successful.

Kayte Young

But, yeah, maybe we should look around in this spot a little bit more and see what we see.

Rose Harding

Usually, I just check around the mayapples, but I think that's my pattern for, like, I know I'm going to look in a spot where there's mayapples and maybe I'll find them there or maybe I won't. Part of it could be too just that this is so close to where I live. So I'm looking here and this is just what it looks like. But yeah, like I said, they can grow anywhere. Like, I have a friend too who found them growing on garbage in the woods.
00:07:47:09
Or they could grow in, like, sandy soil. They could grow in, like, a conifer forest with pine trees and spruce or something. But most of the time in Indiana, I think we do find them under hardwoods. But let's see, we did find one, so we'll probably find more, maybe not many.

00:08:06:12

Kayte Young

Yeah, and that one was so small. I don't even know how you saw it. That's amazing.

00:08:10:18

Rose Harding

Some of the half-frees that are the first ones you find, like this one, we can cut it in half. This is the Genus Morchella.

00:08:19:18

Kayte Young

If you haven't seen a morel before, they don't really look like other common mushrooms. They're anywhere from an inch tall to maybe four inches max. The stems are white or sort of an off white color. And the tops are elongated, not round. They're like a miniature craggy mountain. Thesurface of the cap is veined and pocked in an irregular pattern, and the color can range from pale gray or golden to rich brown to almost black. When you turn them over, you won't see gills or pores.

00:08:55:27

Rose Harding

You're looking for, when identifying a morel is, you can cut them in half and you'll see the stem is all hollow. The cap is usually attached to the stem, and there's another type of morel called a half- free that looks more like a mushroom cap. And those are also still edible. But then if you're looking at them, you can see they kind of have this brainy look to them. But it's like the brain has been like, I don't know, like a it's like a deflated balloon, I guess that's maybe how I'd describe it.

00:09:27:06
So yeah, but it's this, like, very characteristic, it reminds me of tree bark like that has like a lot of braiding in it, it kind of looks like that. And this one is a light brown. And so I'm pretty sure these are yellow morels.

Kayte Young

If this is hard to visualize, head over to our website eartheats.org and you'll see a photo or do a Google image search. That'll work, too. That mottled, craggy surface makes them blend in really well with the leaf litter on the forest floor in early spring. This is part of why they are so difficult to find. But you know, some people find them in their lawns. They really stand out against green grass.

00:10:08:24
My spouse found one in our strawberry patch one year. Go figure. There's one. I was staring right at it.

00:10:19:12

Rose Harding

Oh, cool. I love that little gasp.

00:10:22:05

Kayte Young

I know. Wow. Again, I was just staring right there and did not see it. And then all of a sudden, it just came into focus.

00:10:29:24

Rose Harding

Yeah. I think sometimes for me to find them, I have to just see one. Oh, yeah there's one more. Do you see it?

Kayte Young

Yes, I do see it.

Rose Harding

And then you have like that image, it's like in your head, and then you can find it. Oh, yeah, here's one. Cool.

00:10:46:19

Kayte Young

Wow. They're just really popping up for us. This does, to me, feel like absolute perfect conditions, like you said. Like, it's been cold, but then we've had a few days of warm, plus all this moisture.

00:11:01:23

Rose Harding

Yes.

00:11:02:21

Kayte Young

There's another little one.

Rose Harding

Oh nice, cool. They come in such interesting shapes too.

Kayte Young

Yeah, that one's really tiny.

00:11:09:05

Rose Harding

Like, this one is probably more new because it's kind of scrunched up. And then the last bigger ones we found, they're more stretched out. Now we've collected six. So we've already had a very successful morel season just in this little patch.

00:11:27:18

Kayte Young

I would agree with that completely from my experience.

Rose Harding

Oh, here's one. A little one.

Kayte Young

Yeah, now I'm afraid I'm stepping on them. [LAUGHS] I'm gonna watch where I put my foot.

00:11:49:11

Rose Harding

Yeah. Some people will hike with a, um, like a forked walking stick, and then you can use that to kind of shuffle the leaves around. Yeah, I almost get, like, superstitious about them. Like, I don't want to go into it wanting it too much, because then it's like the morels will hide from me. Like, I need to feel more casual, be open to what I'm going to see. And then I also think if you do enterinto like a forage and you do feel like more open to just looking for things you like in general, like plants, other mushrooms, weird things that you find in the woods, then your vision is like wider. 00:12:29:06

So you won't be so narrowed in on looking for like this one idea of a morel you have in your head. Yeah. And then you'll just stumble across them.

Kayte Young

There's one.

Rose Harding

Oh, nice. Good eye.

00:12:43:18

Kayte Young

It's really hidden in there. I was like, "I don't think that is one." And then I was like, "Yes, it is."

00:12:47:15

Rose Harding

There it is. Also, this one looks like somebody else ate it. Like, it's a little bitten off of. So I usually do a field cleanup where I'll just trim off that part, and then that piece of the mushroom will stay here. Nice. There's a walnut shell. I got so excited. [LAUGHS]

00:13:08:27

Kayte Young

Yeah, the walnut shells will really get you.

00:13:18:21

Rose Harding

This is the half-free. This morel is half-free, so it almost looks like a weird umbrella.

Kayte Young

The very first time I found some, I found those. We weren't even looking for them; they just showed up on the trail.

00:13:34:11

Rose Harding

Yeah, I'm told morels really like disturbance. I have a friend who he was telling me about this great morel patch that he and his brother had. And he gave me some very, very helpful clues as to where this patch was. And it's in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Yeah. And I think it was just like woods they let grow up after they had done construction, and morels, I think love that. 00:13:59:11

They love a disturbance like that. Like, maybe after like prescribed burn or a logging road comes through, you'll find them there, too, sometimes. Oh, there's one. We walked past this one earlier. We're looping back on the way that we came, so we're sort of doing that. We've shifted perspectives of now we can see on the other side of the plants, so we might find a couple more. So far this has been great though.

00:14:32:15

Kayte Young

Yeah, this is awesome. Oh, here's one.

00:14:37:01

Rose Harding

Oh, cool.

00:14:38:09

Kayte Young

That one has a nice shape.

00:14:39:20

Rose Harding

It does. Yeah, it's a little more narrow.

00:14:45:22

Kayte Young

There's one.

00:14:46:19

Rose Harding

Hey. Oh, cool.

00:14:51:10

Kayte Young

I mean, I've kind of heard that this is how it goes. That, like, once you find a patch, then if you just sort of stick around there, you'll find more. It's just never really happened for me that much. [LAUGHS]

00:15:05:08

Rose Harding

Yeah, I think it's that you're here at, like, a key moment, too. Especially after all the rain we've had and now it's warmer, this is just their time to be fruiting. So it's more likely we'll find them. It's like all of the things coming into alignment.

Kayte Young

I really am sure now that we've been stepping on them.

Rose Harding

There's another one. Yeah, a little one.

Kayte Young

Oh, here's another one. It's a pretty good sized one.

Rose Harding

It is, yeah. I was wondering if we'd find more. There you go.

00:15:44:29

Kayte Young

There's one. Is that another half-free?

00:15:47:26

Rose Harding

I think you're right. Yeah, we found that other one, like, right over there. So we might find more than just these two. Oh, there's a spider in there, little guy.

00:15:59:18

Kayte Young

I mean, I think morel hunting is enjoyable anyway. It's so nice to be out this time of year in the woods or just outdoors. But when you're finding them, it's even more thrilling.

00:16:13:21

Rose Harding

Yes, it adds to your energy and you get really excited. Like, how it teaches me to look so closely and like also look back at a larger scale. Like, if I'm looking for a new patch, it's almost like you're having to read the forest a little bit, like think about, well, what is this place like during the year? Has there been disturbance here? If I'm looking up at the trees, am I seeing a tree that's been injured?

00:16:39:26
Is that one where I want to go and look under that tree. Am I seeing, like, all the patches of mayapples, or other spring plants coming up? And then after I do that, then I get low and look really closely. And then even still, I miss them. And I feel like I'm going through with like a fine-tooth comb, but they still hide. But yes, it's still very enjoyable even if you don't find any because it's just wonderful days and weather.

Kayte Young

Yeah, and I like that kind of quiet space that you get into or just like what happens to your vision when you try to see the forest floor differently.

Rose Harding

Yes, totally.

Kayte Young

Ooh!

Rose Harding

Yeah, this one, it was just right down right next to my foot. It's like just waiting.

Kayte Young

Whoops. Yeah, that one's pretty visible. I'm surprised we didn't see it.

Rose Harding

Yeah. It's something where you're looking too closely, and then you can't see what you're looking at.

00:17:43:29

Kayte Young

What are these trees right here that we're in?

Rose Harding

Most of them are black walnut. This one is a boxelder. The boxelder has those, like, knots, they grow in a very brushy way, but yeah. When I first found the morels under the black walnut, I was honestly really surprised because black walnut has that juglone toxin in it. And I thought, no, mushrooms really want to grow around black walnut. And then I found mushrooms and I was like, "All right, sure. Yeah, sounds good."

00:18:17:05

Kayte Young

Okay. So there are no hard rules when it comes to morel hunting. But since we were finding so many that day, I asked Rose to define the conditions of that spot.

00:18:27:08

Rose Harding

It's a floodplain. It's really close to a power line thruway. So there is activity that's coming through here and disturbing the land. And then I'm also seeing those spring ephemerals coming up, which for me, that's been something I find every time. Like, oh yeah, I'm going to see the mayapples, I'm going to see Dutchman's breeches, I'll see lots of greenery. And that's where I'm going to find the morels.

00:18:47:26
It's like all bets are off with morels, I find. Like, you know really good places and, of course, there's also some people who are really good at finding morels and will find pounds and pounds of them because they've been doing it with their family for generations. So they know where to go, they know what to look for. Something I always feel so jealous of, friends I have, who have, like, hunted with their grandparents or something since they were kids and know all these great patches and like what to look for.
00:19:14:26
It's very cool.

00:19:16:21

Kayte Young

Rose mentioned the spring ephemerals. Those are plants that show up and bloom on the forest floor before the trees leaf out. Plants like bloodroot, trillium, jack in the pulpit, spring beauties, Easterns shooting star, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel, corn, toothwort, cut leaf and mayapple. I associate these delicate, fleeting plants with morel hunting, and seeing them feels like a treat, even if I don't hit the jackpot with morals like we did on this day.

00:19:50:19
And I assure you, this is not a typical morel hunt for me and it doesn't sound like it was for Rose either. But it sure was fun to be finding so many in such a short time. I asked Rose for her thoughts on sustainable foraging when it comes to morels.

00:20:09:26

Rose Harding

Good foraging practice is often just take a third of what you see. But a lot of the time for mushrooms, they are fruiting, and so this is their, like, reproductive time. And they'll fruit, but the mycelium is still there. The mycelium will always be there, so I don't worry about taking too many. I think sometimes like if I were to find like a flesh of chicken of the woods mushroom or something, I wouldn't take too many because I know that maybe another forager will come along and they'll want some, too.
00:20:41:24
Or I know, like, a turtle is going to eat it or something like that. So I leave a little bit. I think, also, something that's always important to do is to say thank you as you are harvesting it, whether you vocalize it or not. But I don't usually worry about taking too much when I find morels. And then especially because maybe I'll find a couple, there's probably more, I just didn't see them. 00:21:03:14
But certainly, like, with chanterelles or something like that, I also don't worry about it.

00:21:08:06

Kayte Young

And you don't pull them up by the root, you cut them?

00:21:10:18

Rose Harding I usually cut them, partly just because it keeps my loot a little bit cleaner and then I don't have to do as much cleanup at home, but then it also does leave a piece of the mushroom. If there are insects or turtles or anybody that wants to come along and eat some of it. I think it's different than if you're harvesting plants or like if you're harvesting like the entire plant for some purpose.

00:21:33:17
Or, you know, you will kill the plant by what you harvest. But with mushrooms, it's a little bit different since they're not plants.

Kayte Young

Yeah. With ramps, I've definitely heard that you need to be more cautious about what you take.

00:21:46:20

Rose Harding

Yeah, the ramps is definitely true because it takes so long for them to get there, to be able to have any leaves at all or spread. And in thinking about harvest practice, too, I think like something to keep in mind outside of over-harvesting is what impact are you having on the place where you are foraging? How are you walking in the place? Are you pushing down a bunch of different plants? 00:22:13:15

Are you cutting off big pieces of wood or something like that? So maybe just having a consciousness of your impact to the space outside of what you take from it, like, what you leave there is also very important. Yeah, I think let's keep on walking.

00:22:32:23

Kayte Young

After we exhausted the lowlands, Rose led the way up a wooded hillside in search of another mushroom patch. At some point, I stopped walking, got low, and just scanned the ground in front of me. I told myself it was a morel hunting technique, but really, I think I just needed a break. And it's really nice to just sit quietly in the woods looking and listening. But before long... Oh, boy, okay, I'm coming.
00:23:05:06
Rose has just informed me that she found another patch. I am heading her way. Rose led methrough the trees, across some hilly terrain, past a ramp's patch that's too young to harvest from, to a spot in front of a large shagbark hickory tree on a slight slope. Okay, let me look. Oh, yeah, I see them. I see one. Oh, I see two. Wow. Yes, I love these gray kind. I have harvested these before, and I definitely thought they were really nice.

00:23:43:00

Rose Harding

Yeah, they're pretty special.

00:23:45:08

Kayte Young

The gray ones seemed more dense and meaty, with almost a honeycomb pattern on the cap. This patch was all gray morels. Rose noticed that the tree was damaged. She suspected it was injured when logging equipment came through at some point.

00:24:02:05

Rose Harding

So it could be that these morels are fruiting because this tree is dying.

00:24:07:10

Kayte Young

We collected a few more of the choice gray morels from this spot before heading back down the hill to the road. It was an amazing haul of three different varieties. We found 15 yellow, two half-frees, and seven gray for a total of 22 mushrooms. We were both thrilled when we got back to my car. Rose was kind enough to share the harvest with me.

00:24:36:01

Rose Harding

I think we're gonna make tempura with some of these and just do a little light fry on them, or maybe just have them with butter and eat them straight. And sometimes that's enough when you only get a few.

00:24:48:17

Kayte Young

Well, thank you very much. This was really fun.

Yeah, thank you. It was so nice to go out on a walk and look for some mushrooms, one of my favorite things.

00:24:59:21

Kayte Young

I took my portion home and prepared them like I usually do, lightly battered and sauteed in butter. They were incredible. Nothing tastes like a morel. Rich and wild, yet delicate and subtle. I hope you find a few yourself this season. And if not, I hope that you'll enjoy the search. A slow walk in the woods on a warm spring day is never a waste of time. After a quick break, we'll talk with the Forager Chef Alan Bergo about one of his favorite things to forage in the spring. Stay with us.

00:25:42:23

Kayte Young

Kayte Young here. This is Earth Eats Eats Wild.

00:25:48:24

Alan Bergo

I'm Alan Bergo. I am a chef by trade. I've spent 15 years in the culinary industry, and while I was working in restaurants, I eventually got introduced to wild ingredients, working at a really seasonal restaurant and I saw that these ingredients were really special things I'd never worked with before. And it was kind of my introduction to wild food, really started by getting spoon fed all of the best mushrooms in my area.

00:26:16:28
Sometimes you go out and you don't find mushrooms. So then I started to teach myself plants too. I bought myself every book on mushroom and plant literature I could. And I mean, fast forward, like, 12 years, and I've been doing it full time for six years. I had my show on Apple TV, I won a foraging cooking competition on Hulu. I had my first book come out a few years ago.

00:26:40:21

Kayte Young

I'm going to interrupt here to say the name of Alan Bergo's book is The Forager Chef's Book Of Flora: Recipes And Techniques For Edible Plants From Garden, Field, and Forest. It came out in 2021 with Chelsea Green Publishing. He's also a 2022 James Beard award winner and so much more. So I invited you on the show to talk specifically about spruce tips, because I've been foraging for most of my adult life.

00:27:09:21
I had never tried spruce tips until this year, and they really blew my mind. On your website, Forager Chef, I found ideas for how to prepare them. It was clear that you had really spent a lot of time exploring the culinary possibilities of the plant, and I was wondering if you could take me back to that first time that you encountered this flavor of the spruce tip?

00:27:33:17

Alan Bergo

Well, yeah. This was at Heartland, let's see, 11 years ago. The first time I ate some, I thought they were fantastic. And then I think I ate probably a couple handfuls of them, and then probably got a little bit of indigestion from the high amount of vitamin C in eating them raw. I knew that they were a really cool flavor and something I wanted to play with, but, you know, figuring out how to unlock that flavor, how to not make them be bitter and astringent or offend people.

00:28:02:11
You know, you want to give people a pleasant experience when they eat things. You know, this is just like anything else in the foraging world, it's a learned experience. The cool part and the frustrating part and the challenge and the rewarding part is that every single ingredient is really a learned skill. And every single one is kind of like a research project to me to figure out, okay, what is the best thing and the most useful things, the most creative things, the way that I can make it look beautiful.
00:28:30:03
I really enjoyed their citrusy taste. First, I would just use them as a garnish. I would pull them apart and just kind of sprinkle them on things and you get kind of a different, more lighter flavor just usingthem as a garnish like that. Then, I think, the real breakthrough for me was when I started working with that, well, I would cook them and I didn't like them cooked too much, so using them raw was really where I had the most success, but also mixing them with dairy, especially when it's cold. 00:28:59:24

The dairy somehow seems to calm down that concentration of vitamin C and make it much easier to digest. The fat seems to really calm that down and really ensure that people aren't going to get tummy rumbles as they might if they would just eat like a handful. It's really a lot of experimentation, playing with things, failing ten times to have one success, and then, you know, that story and experience is pretty comparable with a lot of the things I work with.

00:29:26:26
Way more failures than there are successes, and that's part of the excitement too.

00:29:32:13

Kayte Young

It was that process of experimentation that led Alan to his favorite spruce tip recipes.

00:29:38:02

Alan Bergo

Cook them and try to put them on something. They're going to lose that bright green color. The flavor is going to change. So really it's finding ways to utilize them raw. But then if you just eat them raw, some species particularly can have really, really strong flavors and more pronounced astringency. So kind of juggling the which species do I have, what do I have access to and then what's going to be the best way to use that?
00:30:03:05
It's kind of an interesting puzzle to put together. So working with dairy was fantastic. And then making them into syrups, you know, syrups, I feel like people can make syrup out of just about anything but spruce tips and pine cones are one of the best things to make syrups out of. Just the flavor transfers really, really well. And then you can use that as a substitute for maple syrup or in ferments and drinks and things like that.
00:30:29:07
One of the best parts about them is that they're super easy to identify. They're widely available. You're not going to harm the tree. A lot of these trees need to be trimmed anyway. As long as it's amature tree, we're never going to harvest some young trees. But from these larger trees, there's so many, you know, as long as you're just getting there at the right time and they're in the right stage for eating, it's really just an easy gateway for people to get interested into wild food with a very, really interesting, fascinating flavor.

00:31:02:00

Kayte Young

You described a little bit of astringency and you talked about how you really like the citrus flavor. Do you have any other words you could use to describe the flavor of spruce tips for people who haven't tried them or sort of what you're trying to pull out when you're preparing them?

00:31:20:13

Alan Bergo

Yeah, I'm trying to pull out that kind of piney. It's piney, but one of the hallmarks of all the spruce trees that I have eaten is that when you compare them. So you can eat the cones of spruce as well, when they're young, when they're green and tender, and when I say eat the cones, you're not going to take a bite out of them like you are corn on the cob. You know, you're going to infuse that into something, typically sugar or something like that in a maceration.

00:31:45:03
And with pine cones, there's a real, what I would call, like, a resinous, deep, like, warm, spicy quality and then a taste like if you were chewing on pine needles, like a really bright, kind of citrusy pine taste. But spruce specifically has a much, much more pronounced citrus flavor that goes along with that pine flavor that you do not get if you're working with pine trees, pine needles, or fir cones or something like that, which are much more similar to pines.

00:32:19:13

Kayte Young

You share two different kinds of syrup recipes. One, that's kind of a quick one for people who just really want to have the syrup now and don't have the time to prepare it, and then you have another kind of longer process. Could you tell us a little bit about those?

Alan Bergo

Yeah. So the first one was just one that I just made. The first restaurant where I was the chef, I really wanted to have it be as seasonal as possible, and I had bartenders who were really creative. And the first thing that came to mind, I was like, okay, let's put this in some sugar syrup and boil them and see what happens. And the flavor wasn't that strong when I just simmered them just right off the stove.
00:32:58:16
So I buzzed it up and I let it sit overnight, and that gave me a more pronounced flavor, but then cooking it down and getting some of that excess water out really made the flavor get more pronounced. So that was what I would give to my bartenders. I was just like, here, take this and I want you to experiment with some drinks. And here's your thing to play in the sandbox with is this spruce syrup.
00:33:22:05
And then later someone sent me a message from Hungary and they said, we take the spruce tips and mix them with the sugar, and then we bury the jar in the ground, and then we dig it up the next year, and then we cook it and make the syrup from that. And I was like, whoa, this is incredible. So what I started to do was to mix the spruce tips with sugar and buzz them up or just put them in this hole and mix them and let them sit.
00:33:47:17
And eventually, some of the moisture will come out. And after like 30 days, I scraped this sugar spruce tip slush into a pot, bring it to a simmer and it would melt the syrup. And the flavor was, like, so much stronger than the quick syrup. But I do have both recipes on there just because some people, they want it now, and you can get a decent result just by cooking them in syrup and cooking it down a little bit to caramelize it.
00:34:13:14
But the best flavor, and the one that I really recommend people make is just by mixing the spruce tips or buzzing them in a food processor with sugar and letting it sit for, like, 30 days. And, you know, there's some other things to take into account there, like, you know, we want to ward off mold. So you want to make sure that the jar is really fully packed so there is the least amount of air and sugar is pretty stable.

So, you know, I rarely will see any mold on them. But then again, you're bringing it to a simmer which is going to sterilize it before you use it on anything. You know, syrups are very stable for all intents and purposes.

00:34:50:14

Kayte Young

I tried this method at home and was surprised at how stable it was on my counter for more than two months, not a speck of mold or fermentation. Next, I wanted Alan Bergo to tell us about his favorite spruce tip recipe.

00:35:11:05

Alan Bergo

The spruce tip ice cream, that was kind of a breakthrough for me. I had a whole bunch at the restaurant and I thought, how do I make this into an ice cream base? Because if I cook the spruce tips in the cream, it changes their color. And one of the best things about them is that just brilliant bright green color that just screams like spring is here, and then the flavor that goes along with it. 00:35:37:03
So what I did was I made some of my ice cream base, made a custard base, and then I just pureed them in a Vitamix, and then I strained it out and put it into the ice cream maker and it was so good. The flavor changes a little bit. There's a piney quality to it, but the dairy really finessed out some different flavors. One that I get is melon rind, like honeydew melon or melon rind, and in a really non-offensive way, combined with that, that citrusy taste and that pine taste, it was so much fun. 00:36:14:03
Everyone just loved it. It had like a cult following. I had one server who would have her kids picks the spruce tips from their tree every year, and then they would get to bring them into the restaurant, and they'd get to get a scoop of ice cream when they bring their spruce tips in. People just loved it. I wanted to keep it on the menu all the time. Then I had to play around with freezing the spruce tips, figuring out is there a way that I can, you know, preserve this for the long haul so that I can have spruce tip ice cream in the summer, or if I want to have it on a winter menu.
00:36:43:09
And so then I started experimenting with how to preserve them the best. And you can make thebase and just freeze the base without spinning it, or you can just freeze the spruce tips raw. That's what's done with them. Spruce tips are sold commercially, and they're usually about $20 to $25 a pound just for spruce tips put into a vacuum bag and throw it into the freezer.

00:37:02:21

Kayte Young

I think you talked about this on your website. But also, I noticed it trying these recipes, citrus really pairs nicely with the spruce tip. Feels like it kind of brings some of that flavor out or, I don't know, just complements it really well.

00:37:19:16

Alan Bergo

Yeah, especially lime. Lemon is okay. Like, if I don't have any limes, like, I could use some in a pinch. But lime specifically is such a perfect pairing with spruce tips. So when I was thinking about the affinity for spruce and lime and also that, you know, I'm not going to bake them in a pie or something, they're not going to be cooked per se. They're probably going to be pureed into a dairy base, or I'm going to use the cooked syrup, you know, which will give you a slightly different flavor. 00:37:47:10

Not quite the fresh, you know, fresh, bright, almost like electric taste of the fresh tips. So making sure that I'm working with the cold, that kind of limits you a little bit when we're in the baking world. But, like, icebox pies, ice cream, things that I can chill and then puree and have them set, so things with gelatin. That was where I got the idea for the key lime pie. And yeah, it remains one of my favorite things to make with spruce tips, for sure.

00:38:18:29

Kayte Young

And then you also have a few recipes that are in the savory realm. Could you talk about that a little bit?

00:38:25:27

Alan Bergo

The spruce tips, their green, that green citrusy flavor has a nice affinity for, like, spring green,spring vegetables, peas, fava beans, asparagus, and especially fiddlehead ferns. So I have a salad where I take a bunch of very quickly blanched vegetables. So it's still a little bit crunchy, and I mix them together with just a bit of a vinaigrette, that's just season it with lemon juice and some good olive oil.

00:38:55:24
Add some other herbs like mint, spruce tips like mint, soft herbs like mint, tarragon, basil, things like lemon verbena, lemon balm. These would all be very good things. And I take the vegetables and then I add some of the spruce tips in here. You know, we also want to use the really tightly compact ones because as the spruce tips get more leggy and those little needles get pronounced, those needles are eventually going to get to the point where they would, you know, cut your mouth or poke you.
00:39:25:15
So we want to make sure they're nice and tight. So the window for harvesting these to use in a savory dish is much shorter than if we were going to use them in a sweet dish. You have a lot more flexibility if you're harvesting them for something sweet. So you want really nice, tight, young spruce tips, and you just put some in and you toss them in the salad. And then here and there, you get this kind of blast of citrus and spruce here and there.
00:39:51:20
But you don't want to add too many because if kind of like I covered at the beginning, that high amount of vitamin C that they have, when you're eating them just in their pure raw form, you want to do it in small amounts. And so that's why the savory stuff is a little bit more of a novelty. Cooking will kind of reduce that a little bit. But also cooking is going to take away that green flavor and make them a little bit less attractive.
00:40:16:17
So they probably need to be chopped up or folded into something and kind of it hides them a little bit. One of the most important things to add is, every species tastes different, and these flavors can vary drastically on the kind of spectrum of astringency. So black spruce, probably like my least favorite just to eat raw. White spruce, blue spruce, those are two really dependable ones that are also relatively common and easy to find, and to have a pretty dependable flavor and are lower on the astringency scale.

Kayte Young

Thank you for talking with me.

00:40:53:21

Alan Bergo

Yeah. You bet.

00:40:58:27

Kayte Young

That was Alan Bergo. He shares many recipes and detailed information about wild food on his website, The Forager Chef. We have links to his work on our website eartheats.org. And after a short break, we'll dive into his favorite recipe: spruce tip ice cream. Stay with us. Welcome back. This is Earth Eats Eats Wild, and I'm Kayte Young. Before the break, you heard the Forager Chef talking about one of his most treasured recipes, spruce tip ice cream.

00:41:46:13
And I bet you're dying to make some yourself with your very own harvested spruce tips. Well, you're in luck. We're going to walk through the steps of his recipe found on his website, The Forager Chef. So I have harvested a bunch of spruce tips from the campus of Indiana University and the ones I'm working with right now, I have chopped up in the food processor. So I am following this recipe very closely because the Forager Chef says that he has worked really hard on perfecting this and getting the maximum flavor of the spruce into the ice cream and that we really don't need to be tweaking the proportions or anything like that.
00:42:30:02
So I've stuck to the proportions, but I have slightly altered the method. The main reason is because I don't have a blender. I know, shocking. I have a food processor and it works for almost everything, but it doesn't work great for liquid. So I'll explain as we go, but basically what this recipe entails is preparing the custard, which is three cups of half and half, and then five large egg yolks, three quarters of a cup of sugar and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt.
00:42:56:24
So I'm going to get all that ready and then we'll deal with the spruce tips. Let's get all these eggs separated. Okay, let's combine all of our custard ingredients. Three cups of half and half. Three

quarters of a cup of sugar. The five egg yolks and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt. You want to heat up the custard for the ice cream on low heat, whisking it occasionally, and you definitely do not want to overcook it.
00:43:37:14

Kayte Young

You don't want the eggs to start cooking and solidifying, so you're just heating it over low heat until the mixture is hot and starts to thicken slightly. So the instructions for the recipe say to make the custard, add the spruce tips that have just been chopped, you know, like, with a knife. And then when the custard mixture is cool, blend all of that together in a blender, and I just don't have the right tool for that.

00:44:10:11
So what I've done is I have taken the spruce tips and I've chopped them up finely in a mini food processor. I'm going to add that to the custard, when it's cool, and then I'm going to use my immersion blender to just really blend that together until it's nice and smooth. Then he says to strain it and let it sit overnight in the fridge. I am going to let it sit overnight in the fridge and then strain it.
00:44:34:13
The reason for that is because I want the mixture to extract as much of that spruce flavor as possible. It's a slight variation from his recipe, but I think it's one that won't hurt it and can only help it. I have tried this before. It worked really well. It tasted pretty sprucy but not overwhelming. Okay, so our mixture has now heated up fully and now it's time to cool it down. Heat it up, cool it down. 00:45:04:19
The cooling down is going to take a while. You can speed it up a little bit if you transfer it out of the pot that you heated it in and put it in, like, a wide bowl, it will kind of help cool it down a little bit. Stirring it often will help, but basically you just have to wait for it to cool down. All right. So our mixture has totally cooled down. And now I'm going to add the chopped up spruce tips, which I actually put in a mini food processor and just really, like, chopped them up really small. 00:45:34:24
I'm going to add that to the mixture. And then we're going to blend that. And I'm just going to use an immersion blender. The time for harvesting spruce tips this year was mid-April is when they started showing up around the campus on all of the spruce trees that we have. You want to get them when they're nice and small and tender and bright green. Okay. So I got the spruce tips blended in really well with the custard, and now I'm going to chill it overnight.

00:46:06:24
It's the next morning and our custard has sat in the fridge overnight with the spruce tips. And now it's time to strain the mixture and get it into the ice cream maker. This is the final step. I have just poured this through a very fine mesh strainer. Now I'm going to turn on the ice cream maker. It has been in the freezer for more than 24 hours. And we'll let the ice cream churn for about 20-25 minutes and check on it and see if it's frozen.

Okay. Our timer is up, and checking on the ice cream. Seems to be a pretty good consistency. I think it's frozen and we can now move it into some containers and get it in the freezer. And for this part we do need to move quickly. The consistency right now is a lot like soft serve ice cream, which means that it melts pretty quickly and we don't want that to happen. And now for the moment of truth.
00:47:25:22
It is time to taste the ice cream. Mmm. It's a really good ice cream. It's very rich and creamy and delicious. And the spruce tip flavor is there. It's subtle. It's not real strong, but it's there. And it's, the best way I can describe it is it tastes like a Christmas tree smells. So it has some kind of almost a holiday feel or 

Kayte Young
It's really beautiful, I love it. The color is kind of a golden color. It's not green. Very smooth. The ice cream itself is gorgeous. I mean, it's really lovely. It has a subtle sprucy flavor, but it is there. It's subtle and it's really nice. I must note here that I forgot to add one essential ingredient. The lime juice. You might recall how Alan Bergo stressed that lime really pairs beautifully with spruce tips, and based on my experience, it brings the spruce flavor forward.

That's probably why this batch of ice cream had only a hint of spruce flavor. I also followed instructions from the Forager Chef for making the spruce tip syrup by packing raw spruce tips into a jar with brown sugar and letting it sit out at room temperature for about two months. Then I simmered it to melt down the remaining sugar and strained it. That syrup is incredibly flavorful, and we ended up drizzling it on the subtle spruce tip ice cream to kick up the spruce factor. 00:49:21:02
It is perfectly delightful, and I made a cake featuring spruce tips and mint. You can find images of

that and more on our Instagram page at Earth Eats. And that wraps up our final spring episode of the Earth Eats Eats Wild series. We'll be back in June with three summer episodes about wild foods to harvest in warm weather. I hope you'll join us. Follow us on Instagram to keep up with the latest at Earth Eats.

00:49:53:17
We'd love to hear what you think about our special series on foraging. You can email us, eartheats@gmail.com. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Alexis Carvajal, Alex Chambers, Toby Foster, LuAnn Johnson, Leo Paes, Daniella Richardson, Samantha Shemenaur, Payton Whaley and we partner with Harvest Public Media. Special thanks this week to Alan Bergo, the Forager Chef, Rose Harding, and to Monique Philpot for connecting me with Rose.

Earth Eats is produced and edited by me, Kayte Young. Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from Universal Production Music. Our executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.