Edible Ontario: Foraging for wild ingredients

Try: Deep fried dandelion blossoms or dandelion salad with Ontario blue cheese, pecans and maple vinaigrette !

Harvest Time:

Spring-Summer

Location:

Hillsides, grassy areas, forest floor, backyards, roadsides across Ontario.

Identification:

Can grow to 5 -45cm in height, with a long taproot and a rubbery stem containing a milky white liquid inside. Grows a bright yellow flower at the top of the stalk.

Flavour:

Dandelion leaves taste earthy and bitter - it’s similar to endive or radicchio. The earlier they’re picked, the less bitter they will be.

General Description & Uses:

Leaves can be eaten fresh in salads (including the flowers), cooked into soups and stews, or dried and used to make tea (young leaves are better as older leaves become bitter over time). When roasted in the oven for several hours, the roots develop a coffee/cocoa-like flavour, and when ground up it’s good for making tea or using in baking. Stems can be boiled and used as a substitute for pasta.

Dandelion is thought to decrease blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. The leaves of dandelion plants grown in shady areas are less bitter than the leaves of plants grown in sunny areas. You can dry or freeze dandelions to preserve them for later use.

Cautions:

Avoid eating dandelions from lawns or urban areas where pesticides and pollutants may have been used. Avoid dandelions if you have a sensitivity to latex as the milky liquid in the stem contains natural latex.

Try: adding red clover and garlic to your plain Ontario cream cheese!

Harvest Time:

Spring-Summer

Location:

Fields, pastures, roadsides, backyards across Ontario.

Identification:

Grows to about 5-40cm in height with hairy stems. Has the classic clover leaf with three leaflets, and light green V-shaped mark on each of the leaves. The flower is usually round and red/pink in colour.

Flavour:

Floral and bean-like

General Description & Uses:

The flowers can be eaten raw in salads, made into a detoxifying tea, or can be lightly battered and deep-fried. Clover is thought to reduce bad cholesterol and plaque that causes heart disease. The leaves and flowers can be dried and stored for later use. This incredible flower is a wonderful source of several nutrients and dietary fibre.

Cautions:

Only consume the leaves and flowers in moderation, they may cause bloating. Do not eat clover if you’re pregnant or nursing as it can affect the hormonal balance of the body.

Try : using black trumpet mushrooms in your risotto.

Harvest Time:

Summer-Fall

Location: 

Hardwood forests, near streams, mossy areas, areas with lots of deadfall, along trails across Ontario.

Identification:

This mushroom has a distinct funnel or trumpet-shape to it and can grow to be black, grey, or brown in colour. The top edges of the mushroom are rolled outwards. Black trumpets have an unusual feature to them, they do not have gills. Instead, the underpart of their caps are smooth or just a bit wrinkled.

Flavour:

Rich, nutty, smoky flavour.

General Description & Uses:

The Black Trumpet mushroom is a distinctly trumpet-shaped member of the chanterelle family. Known as the "poor man's truffle," black trumpets have a rich, smoky aroma. Black trumpets have one of the most potent flavours of all wild mushrooms, especially when they’re fresh. They are perfect if you want to enhance, soups, sauces, butters, salads, and pastas. They are also very easy to preserve if you have a bountiful harvest, just remember to rehydrate them in warm water when needed. There are no poisonous look-a-likes, making this a great mushroom for beginners to identify, but they're not always easy to find. Their dark colour and shape make them look like little black holes on the forest floor.

Cautions:

Can be sometimes confused with Urnula craterium, the devil's urn. Luckily, the devil's urn is not poisonous, they just have an unappetizing flavour. They have a more cup-like appearance when fruiting in the spring (black trumpets fruit in the summer and fall).

Try: Chef Joseph Shawana’s Creamed Sunchokes recipe!

Harvest Time:

Spring - Fall

Location:

Moist meadows and valleys in Southern Ontario.

Identification:

Jerusalem artichoke, also known as a Sunchoke, is a perennial plant that reproduces by seed and by fleshy rhizomes (underground stems) which bear small, potato-like tubers. The stems are stout, 1-3 metres in height, and become woody over time. The leaves are simple, rough-hairy, oval to lance shaped, with coarsely toothed edges. The flower heads are bright yellow and resemble a sunflower, but are smaller and produced at the ends of stems and axillary branches.

Flavour:

Jerusalem artichoke taste slightly nutty and savoury - like a cross between an artichoke heart and a potato.

General Description & Uses:

Unlike regular potatoes, Jerusalem artichoke tubers are not affected by freezing and thawing. You can leave them in the ground and get them whenever you want, as long as the ground isn’t too frozen. If you decide to put them in your freezer, make sure that they are not washed and still have some dirt on them, this prevents them from getting mushy. If you store them for long periods of time, they will become sweeter, and produce more fructose while inulin levels drop. Similar to other tubers such as potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes are best cooked, however unlike potatoes they can also be eaten raw in salads or smoothies. Sliced thin, Sunchokes can have a crispness to them that is similar to radish. Boiling the tubers can result in something mushy so roasting is a better method of cooking as it helps add depth to the flavour by caramelizing some of the natural sugars it produces. If sliced thin they can also be made into Sunchoke chips. Jerusalem artichokes - or Sunchokes, were a very important food to first nations peoples and was among some of the first foods to be picked up by Europeans and brought back to Europe. Because these tubers are so hardy and are available practically all year round, first nations peoples would forage for them close to the end of winter as their food reserves would run low.

Cautions:

These tubers are high in inulin, a type of carbohydrate that causes gas and bloating. It's most likely to have this side effect when served raw, so go easy the first few times you serve  it in a salad or smoothie. The amount of inulin varies from sunchoke to sunchoke, and each person's sensitivity varies as well. Therefore, it won't affect everyone the same way.