Cooking with Fir: A Taste of the Holidays

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The scent of fir trees is a holiday staple. From seasonal greenery to candles, the aroma heralds “the most wonderful time of the year.”

If you’re looking for a way to immerse yourself even further into the holiday cheer, try introducing fir to your taste buds. From classy cocktails to rustic potatoes, fir adds excellent seasonal flavor. And if you’ve never foraged for fir, don’t worry, we have some tips!

The following recipes are from Forage, Harvest, Feast by Marie Viljoen. It has been adapted for the web.


A Profile on Fir

Other Common Names: Balsam fir, Fraser fir, white fir, Douglas fir, and more

Botanical Names: Abies balsamea, A. fraseri, A, concolor, Pseudotsuga menziesii

Status: Trees native to North America
Where: Eastern, northern, and western America SEASON: Winter through spring, mostly
Use: Aromatic
Parts Used: Needles, cones
Grow? Yes
Tastes Like: Christmas

Fir needles are a relatively recent addition to my wild foods pantry. Since I live in the big city, my first fir forage was truly urban, and quite accidental: an organically grown Christmas tree, sold on a local sidewalk by Windswept Farm, a grower from Vermont.

I did not grow up with northern Christmas trees. My childhood Christmases were spent under blazing summer skies to the sound of swimming pool laughter. Our tree was a statuesque dried agave flower (called garingboom in Afrikaans), painted white. Quite effective, but perfectly dead. Thousands of miles and a hemisphere away, the intensely evocative fragrance of the firs sold on holiday sidewalks in winter Brooklyn is still intoxicating to me. I love the time of year when the tree sellers migrate down from Vermont and Québec and set up their perfumed walk-through shops with twinkly lights. One year, when I was taking down our own tree in January, I was surprised by how strongly scented the needles still were, despite being crisp. I carried a few branches into the kitchen and began plucking. Then I added vodka. That is how a new holiday winter tradition began.

The fir genus is Abies, and it belongs to the pine family (Pinaceae). Many species of Abies are distributed across North America. If their needles are aromatic, and untreated, use them. In the Northeast we most often see balsam (Abies balsamea) and Fraser fir (A. fraseri), as well as hybrids of the two. Well-known Douglas fir—also very useful and scented—is not actually Abies, but Pseudotsuga menziesii.

I now ask for fresh trimmings from organic tree sellers. These branches, clipped from trees cut for customers, are usually given away free, though I would be happy to pay a few dollars for the distinctive flavor that I preserve to use all year, back at home.

Viscously cold fir-infused vodka sends your party in a Nordic direction. And Fir Sugar is an absurdly easy way to preserve the flavor and apply to it to everything from cocktails to dessert: Added to a small batch of fermenting summer elderberries, it makes a liqueur that demands marketing; substitute Fir Sugar in a butter cookie recipe for a holiday snack with a whisper of the North; add a dab of the green sugar to the frosting, too; and use it instead of the regular sugar and vanilla to make a surprising ice cream topped with chocolate sauce.

Fir Salt is a staple in my cured salmon and works very well with duck breast, too, whether in curing or to season a sauce with late-fall chokeberries.

How to Collect and Prepare

If you are wild-harvesting, use clean pruning shears and make a clean, considerate, angled cut. At home cut the fir into lengths that fit inside a jar, and store until needed. Use the needles dried or fresh. When you are processing fresh needles in a spice grinder, wipe the blades immediately with a hot, damp cloth, as the accumulated resin from the needles is very tenacious and will dry hard.

Caution

Know your evergreens. If you are unfamiliar with trees that have green needles, you could possibly mistake toxic yew (Taxus species) for fir. Fir is intensely scented. Yew is not.


Fir Vodka

Makes 3 cups (750 ml)

Opening a bottle of this infused vodka never fails to suck me into a seasonal wormhole. I actually can’t drink it in July. It smells like Christmas. It is the most evocative scent I know. Make it with fresh or dried fir.

INGREDIENTS

  • ¼ cup (8 g) fir needles
  • 3 cups (750 ml) vodka

PROCESS

Place the needles in a clean jar and top with the vodka. Seal and leave to macerate for 1 to 4 weeks. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, and then again through cheesecloth. Bottle in clean glass bottles.


Fir Sugar

Makes 2¼ cups (450 g)

Fir Sugar is wonderful on cocktail glasses—dip the rims of the glasses first into lemon juice and then gently into Fir Sugar, letting the rims dry for 10 minutes before filling the glasses. (To clean these sugared glasses, stand them upside down on a plate with a little warm water until the sugar loosens.) It also perfumes syrups, ice creams, and other desserts and adds zest to savory recipes for cured duck, pork, and salmon.

INGREDIENTS

  • ½ cup (16 g) fir needles
  • 2 cups (400 g) sugar

PROCESS

Process ¼ cup (8 g) of the needles in a spice grinder with ¼ cup (50 g) sugar until very smooth and bright green. Scrape down the sides of the grinder and transfer this green sugar to a bowl. Repeat with the rest of the needles and another ¼ cup sugar. This will make a very bright green, sticky, and concentrated sugar. Add the remaining 1½ cups (300 g) sugar to the green sugar in a bowl, mixing it extremely well before bottling in clean jars and storing. The green color will fade with time (sadly), but the flavor and aroma remain intense for over a year.


Firgid

Makes 1 drink

A bracing cocktail for freezing weather. Good fuel for fruitcake baking.

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 fluid ounces (8 tablespoons) whiskey
  • 1 fluid ounce (2 tablespoons) Fir Vodka
  • ½ teaspoon Fir Sugar

PROCESS

Shake it all up without ice to dissolve the sugar. Add ice, shake again, strain, and pour.


Fir-Smoked Roast Potatoes

Serves 4 as a side

These incredible and curiously woodsy potatoes are divine. They were inspired by the work of very talented Paul Robinson. I make smauxed (faux + smoked, get it?) potatoes: I have no smoker, but small batches inside a very large stockpot on the stove work superbly. You must seal the lid carefully and unseal it outdoors or your house will smell for a week. Use all the duck fat trimmings you have been hoarding or rendering for just this moment.

INGREDIENTS

  • ¼ cup (60 ml) fir needles
  • 2½ pounds (1.1 kg) Idaho potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch (2½ cm) pieces 2 cups (500 ml) rendered duck fat
  • 1 teaspoon salt

PROCESS

Lay a piece of foil in the bottom of your largest stockpot. Place the fir needles on top of it. Cover with another piece of foil. Insert a steamer basket in the pot above the foil. Lay the potatoes in the basket. Place the lid on the pot. Now use painter’s tape or foil to seal the space where the lid and the pot meet. Place the pot over medium-low heat and leave it undisturbed for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Place the duck fat in a roasting tray or heavy skillet and slide into the oven.

Take the pot outside (I am not kidding) and unseal it. A lot of smoke will escape. Remove the steamer basket. Back in the kitchen, carefully pull out the pan with the hot fat. Transfer the potatoes to it. Roast for 50 to 60 minutes until they are golden brown, turning them once. Remove them from the fat and drain for a minute on paper towels. Sprinkle generously with salt. Eat while hot.


Fir and Lemon Ice Cream

Makes 1 pint (500 ml)

The penetratingly refreshing scent of fir captured in a spoonful of lemony ice cream is not something you will forget. I like to use Meyer lemons because of their very floral zest. But this will be good with ordinary juice lemons. The ice cream is intensely flavored, and a small portion goes a long way.

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 ounces (113 g) Fir Sugar
  • 4 ounces (113 g) ordinary sugar ½ cup (125 ml) cold whole milk 1 tablespoon Meyer lemon zest ½cup
  • (125 ml) cold lemon juice 1½ cups (375 ml) cold cream

PROCESS

Combine the sugars and the milk in a bowl and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the zest and the lemon juice and stir well. Whip the cream until it holds soft peaks. Fold it into the milk mixture.

If you are using an ice cream maker, pour the mixture into its bowl and churn until very thick, about 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer to a container and place in the freezer to harden. (I buy 16-ounce frozen dessert containers online for neat ice cream storage.)

If you do not have an ice cream maker, pour the mixture into a shallow container so that when it is full the mixture is about 3 inches (7½ cm) deep. Place in the freezer, covered. After 2 hours remove and use a fork to stir the frozen edges into the center. Repeat every hour until the ice cream is frozen and mixed well.


Recommended Reads

Spruce Tip Key Lime Pie: A Flavorful, Foraged Dessert

Cooking With Pears: Tips & Recipes

Read The Book

Forage, Harvest, Feast

A Wild-Inspired Cuisine

$40

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