Foraging for a Hearty Winter Soup in January

[Music] [Music] three years ago i published a video foraging for a winter soup and it has since become one of my most viewed videos with over 26 000 views at the time of creating that video i was beginning to think about the challenges of foraging for a hearty meal especially at a time when it seems as though plants have little to offer and let's face it while the soup may have warmed me up it wasn't the most substantial meal since then i've pondered such questions as what would make a forged winter meal feel substantial which plants would be available to make this and what would need to be forged in advanced while there may be some debate as to the nutritional quality of a hearty meal i concluded that for my own desires that such a winter meal would need to meet the following criteria be both warm and filling and it would thus contain a source of carbs fat and protein the source of fat and protein will come from black walnuts that i collected this last fall and as an additional source of protein i'm going to cheat a little by using our coil eggs i'm also adding oyster mushrooms as a meat technically it was grown in my garden yet one can still find such mushrooms this time of the year so with all that said let's get started [Music] now look at that a nice patch of bull thistle so you can see here closer up the crown of the bull thistle and i snipped off the base of the tap root and snipped off all the leaves and the part i want is right here where the leaves meet the taproot what i'll do after this when i clean it up wash the dirt off and then i'll come back and cut just enough to where there's no more spines and then that will be cooked in the soup so i got to collect a few more of these gotta check out the creek while we're here sometimes i don't know if you can tell but on these dead alders here uh i have found some wild oyster mushrooms here i don't think i'll see any because i've been checking lately and i haven't seen any but there is a couple spots where there might be some we'll go peek real quick if so then we don't have to use my garden mushroom wait i think i see something hold on so check that out they're a little past their prime but these are the late fall oyster and the way you can tell is uh instead of the gills going all the way down the stock these ones they stop here at the stock and then the stock itself has this kind of texture of like a newt skin and this is edible but again these are past the prime and the thing about these is they're a lot tougher so you have to either cook them for a long time or fry them to all the waters out and [Applause] they're not choice by my taste but there's a lot of people who love them so we'll check another possible spot [Applause] so this tree here this dead alder was the last spot i was going to check for the wild oysters but they're all gone at this point so i'll have to collect some from the garden but every time i come here i'm reminded just how beautiful this scenery is [Applause] good news is i may not found some mushrooms but i did find [Applause] so far i found the crowns of both thistle as well as some wild onions and i'm going to go out to the field i'm going to dig up some well carrot and some field mustard and then after that i'm going to wash everything off we'll get to the cooking process [Applause] [Applause] you want to take george how about you paul as an attempt to make a soup thickener i'm setting aside some of my carrot and mustard roots once chopped they're placed in the dehydrator after which they'll be grinded up into a powder [Music] in addition black walnut meat will also be ground up as part of the thickener just one cup of black walnut meat contains approximately 52 grams of fat as well as 12 grams of protein so [Applause] so sure cracking and shelling the meat can be time consuming but of all the plants in this meal its nutritional contribution makes it invaluable let's see how the quail are doing good morning chicky chicks good morning say hi to the camera say hi to the camera chicky chicks i think i see some girl can i have this one thank you how about this one say hi to the camera before i leave is that is that you judge june thank you for the eggs so it's true we didn't find any wild oyster mushrooms but this will happen to have some growing there's one in particular that i want to harvest this granddaddy right here [Music] [Music] so [Music] do well it's been two days in the making and this hearty winter meal is finally ready to eat but the question remains how does it taste we'll get to that but first this quick commercial break [Music] if you enjoy my content so much and wish to help support this foraging passion of mine please consider purchasing a copy of my book featuring 26 of the most common and easy to identify edible plants of the pacific northwest its convenient size and easy to use format make this pocket-sized field guide the perfect foragers reference to use in all your foraging adventures to purchase a copy of your own or as a gift for a friend please follow the link to my etsy shop down in the description below thank you very much and happy foraging the moment you all been waiting for my hearty winter soup this covers all the bases it covers the carbs i was looking for it covers the fat and it covers the protein so the question is though how does it taste that's pretty good you get the the creaminess of the ground walnut and you get the umami flavor of the ground oyster powder as well as the ground up root this is pretty good let's try a piece of the bull thistle crown i can't i gotta try another one that's hard to explain it's it's really good the flavor is better than you think i think what i'm getting is the the nuttiness of the crown the taproot of the bull thistle but them getting the umami of the mushroom and it's they're complementing each other really well and it's very very solid it's cooked well but still has a crunch okay right here i have a little quail egg yolk very creamy just like it's like chicken egg yolk but i think this is a creamier okay i'm gonna get a piece of the carrot root okay well the carrot yep just like carrot exactly what you'd expect a pear and a stew i'm really impressed in fact i'm not only impressed but i'm really i'm really hungry because i've been spending the past few hours putting this together but i'm gonna get some of this oyster mushroom very clean subtle mushroom flavor it's it's not as strong as maybe some of the button mushrooms you get but it really does a good job of taking on different flavors and i think it took on some of the the ground walnut i think it's absorbing some of that oil because it has a very creamy good mushroom flavor the main question is is this a hearty suit that's going to keep me feeling full so i'm going to finish this and i'll let you know how i'm feeling whether i'm full or not [Music] is this a hearty meal this is a hearty like five meals i don't know why i made so much that huge mushroom just very filling i have that much left i don't know what i was thinking i made a meal for four or five people i think ideally you just have some bread and a small bowl of soup like a regular person of course i had a challenge myself to try to get full on this i would say to conclude the flavors go really well if you're looking for something that is not bitter uh especially in the winter time full thistle is never bitter or at least has never been better for me carrots are almost always pretty good field mustard it's hit and miss sometimes it's bitter same thing with the onions usually they're pretty savory sometimes they can be a little bitter but in this case everything went really well i think i think the two things i would say for future reference that went really well together that creates a very rich soup is the ground walnut and the oyster mushrooms a person could probably make a soup just those two things alone and it'd be satisfying everything else is just fiber and filler and of course eggs were another hit of protein but i think i might have to do another soup a third soup video but with just those two things i don't know what are your thoughts do you have any good ideas for a foraged soup thank you for those who do comment and and all the likes i get thank you for all the likes and thank you for the many views on my channel and here i am over i don't know four or five thousand subscribers which is crazy since i haven't posted a video in over a year or two please hit that like if you did and subscribe if you want to see more and let me know your thoughts down in the comments below and as always happy foraging one more taste time to go [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: The Northwest Forager

Views: 76,031

Keywords: winter foraging, wild edible plants, foraging book, Oregon foraging, how to forage, foraging in the pacific northwest, foraging, foraging in winter, what to forage in winter, what plants can you forage in winter, can you forage in winter, foraging guide, raising quail, bull thistle edible, oyster mushroom edible, field mustard edible, wild carrot edible, wild onion edible, black walnut edible, quail eggs, pacific northwest, wild food, foraging in Oregon, wild food winter

Id: 6BV6uZkbLJI

Length: 24min 20sec (1460 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021