hi i'm the last grown up in the woods
carly fairbrother today i'm going to be
talking about fiddleheads before i go
outside i want to talk a little bit
about identification
i live in the lower mainland of british
columbia and around here there are four
species of ferns that you typically see
in fiddlehead form this time of year
first one i want to cover is one of the
most
common ones the sword fern they do
resemble ostrich ferns
those are the ferns that are most
commonly used as fiddleheads they don't
go around
here and sword fern is not edible
it probably won't kill you but i don't
think it's that tasty
the next fern that i want to talk about
is brackenfern
this is it right here if you don't know
your ferns well it may look like some of
the other edible
ferns but it's generally bigger spiny
wood friend and the lady friend
typically looks like just one of these
leaves here
it's a little different as fiddleheads
in the each one of these leaves tend to
be curled individually
while the whole stem is not so curly
people have eaten it but now it's
commonly thought to be a carcinogen
so skip that one skip the sword fern
this next one is a spiny wood fern
and i will show this one when i'm
outside it's typically about yay big
it likes to grow on dead wood and the
the entire front is almost
triangle shaped so it makes this
triangle the other difference and the
the really useful one with fiddleheads
is that down here on the stem on the
bottom of the stem it will have a lot of
sauri
those are the brown scaly bits that grow
on the stem
and i'll show you that in the field some
first nations groups seem to
use it as fiddleheads i have read
somewhere that they are
mildly toxic but i can't seem to find
that information again
i should add that they are in the same
genus as the shield fern
which doesn't grow around here but it is
commonly thought to be edible as a
fiddlehead
blast fern is the most edible one in the
area if you look at these bottom leaves
they're a lot smaller
the whole frond almost has a feather
shape the other difference from the
spiny wood front is that it typically
has
less sari this one in fiddlehead form is
the most edible
there have been some cases of food
poisoning there's two things you can
do to stop that the first thing is to
eat them right away
the other big thing is to cook them
cooking makes them taste better and
easier to digest
it also kills off any potential
pathogens that are on the fennel head it
also helps to break down any toxins
especially if you've misidentified your
species
hello i have just come across some ferns
there's three ferns right in the same
square meter
and they're all in fiddlehead and adult
form so that's going to be super great
for letting me show you
the differences this one here's a lady
fern justin
fiddlehead form you can see here that
there's not a lot of sorry
on the base and the bottom leaves are
pretty small these ones are too
old to eat so we're going to have to
find some fiddlehead somewhere else
this one would be the spiny wood fern
the leaves usually start further up the
stem
and they're typically darker you can see
the sore eye right here at the base
and here's an unfurled spiny wood fern
you can really see here how the frond
makes a triangle shape
right over here sword fern
super distinctive around here so i got
the fiddleheads from each one
lady fern has a lot less of these little
scaly bits
and as you unfurl them you can see lady
fern
these bottom ones are a lot shorter this
one is our spiny wood frame
our spiny wood fern as we unfurl them we
see they're a lot darker
and this is a lot longer so we have
this bottom the bottom front here
the bottom leaf actually the whole thing
is a frond
bottom is a lot longer than this
see that scrape all this
scrape all the brown gunk off first
so i'm just gonna throw them in and you
know what i'm back in my own kitchen now
i've cleaned the sorae off
my friends back in my parents kitchen
and i pretended i was about to steam
them
but really i'm gonna steam them here i'm
just gonna let those steam for a couple
of minutes until they're nice and soft
and thoroughly cooked
i'm back fiddleheads are steamed i've
come equipped with my mini frying pan
and some butter
because as we all know everything tastes
better when fried in butter
right right i like to do them with a
little bit of soy sauce
and a little garlic but since i'm too
lazy to cut up garlic i'm just gonna eat
some of this
yeah i really like them in a stir-fry
with some tempeh
delicious here we have them delicious
maybe a little over sauteed fiddleheads
um
perfect need salt