Wild Food: How to Forage and Store Wild Greens
Whether you are an expert forager or new to the skill, it’s important to understand how to store your freshly picked bounty. Alan Bergo has the lowdown on how to harvest your greens and cook them for the best storage so your harvest can stay fresh for days after being picked.
The following is an excerpt from The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora by Alan Bergo. It has been adapted for the web.
Verdant Greens, Bitter and Sweet
Seeing the first leafy greens poke up through the ground is one of the most exciting parts of the year and a promise of many green meals to come after a winter where my frozen supply is dwindling or depleted. There are so many greens I love to eat, both cultivated and wild, that, instead of trying to share some sort of encyclopedic reference for many plants, I wanted to gather some of my favorite ways to cook greens as a sort of core sample of delicious ideas you can apply to many different greens—whether they came from the woods, your yard, or a supermarket. After we cover some basic harvesting and cooking techniques, the first recipes are those in which just about any greens can be used, followed by those where you might reach for young, tender greens, and finally recipes that commonly call for greens with some bitterness, such as dandelions or mustards. Even so, you should know that plenty of examples within those categorizations are open to interpretation.
Where possible, I’ve noted historical combinations and recipes enjoyed by different cultures featuring specific species, but you should feel free to experiment with whatever plants are around you.
Harvesting Greens
Harvesting your own greens will quickly show you the incredible bounty of nature. Once you know a few plants, their sheer volume and variety can be intimidating in the best way, leaving you wondering, What will I do with all this food? No matter who you are or how much you know, if you don’t take care of your food it won’t taste good, and if it doesn’t taste good you won’t enjoy it.
Just as the people who harvest flowers in Provence for the perfume industry often work at a precise time of day (after the morning dew has evaporated and before the heat of the midday sun), harvesting greens in the morning is better than in the midday heat, especially if you have to travel any distance to get back home. Even so, if you find yourself someplace and uncover a patch of nettles begging to come home with you, you’ll likely be fine, though the plants might need some refreshment when you get home.
If I can share only one secret about harvesting plants with you, this is it: When I harvest green plants, even if I’m just in the yard with a pair of scissors, I bring them inside and soak them in water as quickly as I can, not because they’re dirty, but because it reduces their temperature and imbibes them—cleaning them in the process is just a bonus. Greens can be washed and dried any old time, but plants are living things and detaching them from their roots stresses them. Soak them in cold water, though, and they’ll literally come back to life in your sink, typically in about 5 minutes (or longer, if they’ve started to wilt).
Soaking wild greens after picking removes grit but also refreshes them, making them crisp, as if they were just picked.
I guarantee you: A simple soak in cold water after picking can extend the life span of your fresh greens beyond what you’ve ever thought possible. Keeping cooking greens for weeks on end, as long as they’re cared for, is possible, although I go through mine so quickly at home that it’s never an issue. Depending on how long they’ve been out of the ground, or if they’ve been sitting in a warm car, soaking the greens until they come back to life can require some time, but 30 minutes is the longest it ever takes, and only in the direst circumstances (greens left on a dashboard—I didn’t do it!) have they not come back to life. Just as a cutting can sprout an entire new plant, freshly clipped greens still have a strong will to survive.
This is the trick I’ve used to supply multiple restaurants with plants I pick by hand, driven into town in the heat of a midwestern summer not in the back of a refrigerated truck, but in the back of a jet-black Honda with a janky A/C unit from a farm 60 miles (96 km) away. And I harvest alone. Even after spending hours in bins and tubs in the warm air while I snip-snip-snip, pound after pound and bag after bag of fresh greens, sometimes piled on top of one another, will come back to life just like new, as long as they get soaked in cold water within an hour or two of picking.
Basic Ways to Cook Wild Greens for Storage
There are a lot of ways to cook fresh greens. I choose my methods based on the specific plant I want to eat, or whether I’m trying to cook large amounts at one time to preserve them.
Blanching
Blanched wild greens. In some places (Italy) you might see balls of cooked greens like this at your local market or farm stall. They’re space saving and convenient.
Blanching, or submerging something in boiling (typically salted) water for various lengths of time, is great for greens that may have a strong flavor like sochan or bitter mustards, or for when you want to preserve or quickly cook large amounts of greens without overcooking them, as can happen with steaming. If you find a particular plant strong tasting in its raw state or when cooked from fresh, try blanching it before cooking. Some people are sensitive to compounds in certain plants, such as oxalates in spinach or amaranth; for these individuals, blanching the plant can mean the difference between being able to eat the plant and having to skip a serving of greens. Blanching usually yields 1 pound (455 g) of greens for every 11/2 pounds (680 g) raw.
My favorite method for storing excess greens for use throughout the year is to blanch and freeze them. Here’s a walkthrough of my process:
I harvest as many greens as I can, usually about 10 pounds (4.6 kg) for a preserving batch, but you can do it with whatever quantity you like. From there, I fill the largest stockpot I can find with salted water and bring it to a boil. Meanwhile, I scrub and clean the sink or a large bowl, and fill it with cold water. Once the water boils, I cook the greens in large batches just until wilted—a few seconds—and immediately transfer them to the sink of cold water until cool. Next, I squeeze out the water and form the greens into balls, which I freeze in zip-top bags. Because the greens essentially get washed twice, this is a great way to prepare greens fresh from the garden that might have extra grit.
Blanching greens in salted water might not seem like a big deal, but besides making food taste more like itself, salt is a preservative, and a powerful one. Over the years I’ve seen the difference, and have scolded more than one line cook for not salting their water. I guarantee you, greens cooked in salted water will last at least twice as long as those simply blanched and shocked in a cold-water bath. This is a good thing if you have the habit of taking frozen greens out to thaw and not getting to them for a few days, as I do. As for the amount of salt, I generally season the water until it tastes like the sea—generally 1 tablespoon for every 4 cups (945 ml) of water (some of my friends will double that)—but even using a small amount of salt can make a difference in the life span and flavor of blanched greens.
Freeze-Wilting
Freeze-wilting is a good alternative to blanching. It involves putting greens in the freezer, which quickly wilts them. This is good for flavorful greens and herbs that would lose some flavor from blanching in water. Mild (nonbitter) mustard greens or strongly scented herbs such as lovage are good candidates for this method, as well as lacinato and other kales. It’s also a great way to wilt greens for cooking, even if they won’t be frozen later, since they take up less space in the pan.
Here’s how to do it:
Put your leafy greens in a container, such as a grocery or other bag, and place the bag in the freezer for 30 minutes, then remove and thaw at room temperature. Portion the greens into your preferred containers for freezing, then label, date, and refreeze until needed.