Plants You Can Eat

Introduction | Edibility of Plants | Plant Identification | Universal Edibility Test | Preparation of Plant Food | Plants for Medicine | Miscellaneous Uses of Plants |

Preparation of Plant Food

Although some plants or plant parts are edible raw, you must cook others to be edible or palatable. "Edible" means that a plant or food will provide you with necessary nutrients, while "palatable" means that it actually is pleasing to eat. Many wild plants are edible but barely palatable. It is a good idea to learn to identify, prepare, and eat wild foods.

Methods used to improve the taste of plant food include soaking, boiling, cooking or leaching. Leaching is done by crushing the food (for example, acorns), placing it in a strainer and pouring boiling water through it or immersing it in running water.

Boil leaves, stems and buds until tender, changing the water, if necessary, to remove any bitterness.

Boil, bake or roast tubers and roots. Drying helps to remove caustic oxalates from some roots like those in the Arum family.

Leach acorns in water, if necessary, to remove the bitterness. Some nuts, such as chestnuts, are good raw but taste better roasted.

You can eat many grains and seeds raw until they mature. When hard or dry, you may have to boil or grind them into meal or flour.

The sap from many trees, such as maples, birches, walnuts and sycamores, contains sugar. You may boil these saps down to a syrup for sweetening. It takes about 35 liters of maple sap to make one liter of maple syrup!