Finding Treasure in Foraged Food

Finally! Fingers crossed, we are done with the snow. After a MN winter that decided to move back in, we deserve to have our senses overwhelmed with Spring in all its glory.  At the same time, people are getting more into local food. Sounds like a recipe for an explosion in foraging for food.

In case you’re not quite there, hang with me for a minute. Ramps, mushrooms, fiddleheads (the still unfurled fern) and the elusive wild asparagus are all Spring favorites of the Minnesota forager. Berry season is another bountiful blessing. If you want to look at some beautiful ‘found’ eats check out this Pinterest page! Now, that’s the kind of page I could get lost on.

Ground Rules of foraging: respect private land, find out if the public land you’re on allows foraging, sustainable harvesting and to find out what if any chemicals have been sprayed.

For our cozy little time together let’s tackle the savory, short lived ramp; AKA ramsons or wild leek. You know you’re cool when you have three names.

I’ve known about the patch of ramps in my parent’s woods for years, I remember I dug one up decades ago and was utterly confused because they looked like an onion but smelled like garlic and were not so great raw. Turns out they’re the trendy hipster cousin to the onion now in high demand. I usually steer clear of trends (I’ve finally learned my lesson, thank you 1980’s) but these potent little pearls have me jumping on the spring foraging bandwagon. These alliums are taking over the foodie world again this Spring and my kitchen will smell like ramps for the foreseeable future.

What exactly are we talking about here? They are in the allium family, meaning onion. And what they lack in size, they make up for in smell. You can sometimes locate them by smell just as well as sight, but they are some of the earliest greenery popping up from forest floors each Spring.

credit: MinnesotaWildFlowers.info

credit: MinneostaWildFlowers.info

Here’s a close up from the Minnesota Wild Flowers website, showing the flowers and later season seeds. I’ve heard the seeds will take hold if given a loamy deciduous woods home.

Minnesota Wild Flowers   is such a great site. Within each of the listings you can add info on where/when/how many plants you spotted, helping to build a living breathing network of plant life. Fun way to be part of something bigger!

Please, let’s be smart and practice sustainable harvesting of these little guys. There are two ways to go about this: either taking only 10% of a found ramp field or leaving roots intact. You can leave the roots intact by digging down around the ramp leaves, and then cutting where the bulb fattens, so you leave the bottom of the bulb and roots in the ground.

That way you’ll be able to come back the next year and harvest again, and again, and again! Once harvested, get them cool ASAP- I found that a plastic bag (thank you Target) rolled up in the fridge works for a day or so. Past 48 hours and I’ve got no data for you, they have yet to last longer than that in our kitchen.

Since ramps are rocking at the same time as asparagus, and in my case grow about 100 feet apart, it’s only natural that I’d want them to co-mingle their flavors. This is the epitome of simple, local, healthy, flavorful food!

Planting our asparagus patch was one of the best additions to our veggie situation, early perennial vegetables add weeks to our local eating every Spring.

I never follow specific recipes (that’s why my baking is hit or miss!), I’ll just say to go easy on the ramps, you don’t need many to turn up the flavor of eggs, potatoes, pork, or as my ‘faux recipe’ below shows; asparagus.

Heat olive oil over med-high heat in cast iron skillet.

Chop asparagus stems (look how fat yet still tender & juicy ours were) throw them in to sear for a few minutes.

Then add asparagus tops and let them sizzle for a few more minutes.

Then add whole ramps, letting them get roasty so they can show off some smoky flavors.

Devour as soon as the steam allows.

Adding a few chopped ramp stalks to eggs in the morning has even chipped away at my chive love.

I’m going to have to gather some more leaves only (not even digging into the ground) and try the Ramp Salt Recipe at the end of this  article from Carstens Smith, writing for the Star Tribune.

There are ample posts about the uber-love of ramps, including these from Wild Edible and Eater. This is one trend that I hope stand the test of time.

Have you foraged for any food before, for ramps? Want to try it now?

I dare you to dig in this summer and forage at least one food!

Michelle