How To Eat Spruce Trees - with a focus on the new growth of spring
Did you ever eat a spruce tree? I eat them! Come and see how to identify spruce trees, get some tips on picking spruce tips -- the new spring growth -- and then see a few ways that I have been eating spruce trees. What I cover works for all kinds of spruce!
Spruce Needles Come From Spruce Trees
Spruce trees are evergreen conifers. The most reliable way to identify a spruce is to look at the needles on a branch. Each needle comes out of the branch alone, by itself, not in a group. And each needle has a stalk, a little stump, a peg, which is the distinguishing feature of a spruce.
White spruce, red spruce, black spruce, blue spruce, Norway spruce, Sitka spruce, and Engelmann spruce are the kinds you are most likely to see. Even if you don't live in a northern forest, spruce are often planted in yards and parks, especially Colorado blue spruce and Norway spruce.
Picking Spruce Tips
In the spring, when the new growth starts to come out, is a great time to get food from the spruce tree. The new growth is easy to identify because it is brighter in color and the needles are soft.
Picking spruce tips from a standing tree is a good exercise in self-control and judgment. Every tip that's picked is pruning the tree. That tip will not grow back. So don't pick too many spruce tips from one branch. And focus on the tips that will ultimately be shaded and die back anyway - that means the tips in the interior of the tree and the tips close to the ground.
There is a way to get a lot of spruce tips - cut entire branches from the tree! I have to prune my Colorado blue spruce to maintain visibility from my driveway. So I wait until spring to cut the branches. Then I can relax and harvest the spruce tips at my leisure. I prune branches from my Engelmann Spruce, too, focusing on branches that will be shaded and self-pruned soon.
I think the Colorado Blue Spruce is my favorite of the spruce trees I have eaten. But they are really prickly. Be careful not to get the mature needles in your picking, because they can be as stiff and hazardous as fish bones!
What Do Spruce Needles Taste Like?
Every kind of spruce tree has a little different flavor. It's a combination of citrus and resin. Spruce trees will have their new tips at different stages of growth, so there's a lot of selection. The tiniest tips have the mildest flavor.
The resin flavor of the new growth of spruce tees will taste the strongest straight off the tree. When the tips are soaked in water or other liquids, the resin flavor takes as step back and the citrus flavors step forward.
In our regular food, we don't encounter the spruce's resin flavor, so it can seem strong and strange. If you like foods like highly hopped beer, strong coffee, or dark chocolate, you might really like the taste of spruce. And once you get acclimated to that resin taste, it's easy to want more!
Cooking With Spruce Tips
Spruce tips are good to eat in so many ways! I'll show you how in future posts. But here's a menu of some ways I've enjoyed the spring growth of spruce trees.
The easiest way to enjoy spruce tips is to soak them in jar of water for a few hours, in the sun. That spruce water tastes incredible -- it's like drinking the forest! That water also makes a great Spruce Tree Sorbet. And the soaked spruce tips to make some amazing Pine Pollen - Spruce Tree Cookies.
The chopped up spruce tips also make a great version of balsamic vinegar with only 3 other ingredients that are probably in your house: honey, peppercorns, and cider vinegar. I use my Spruce Tree Balsamic Vinegar in a lot of ways that I'll show in future posts. But you can see one way I use it, along with a video on how to make it, in this post: A Garden Harvest Repast.
If you want to see how to put all this into action, with more details, here's my video on how to eat spruce trees:
What Do You Think?
I hope you get a chance to enjoy something from the spruce tree smorgasboard!
- How do you eat spruce trees?
- Would you like to eat spruce trees?
- Do you have any spruce trees near you?
- Do you eat any other trees?
If you ever eat any any spruce trees, I would really like to know about it! Put @haphazard-hstead in your post so I'll be notified and use the #foraging tag so all the Steemit foragers can find it! I'll be eating spruce trees in other ways , too. If you follow me, you stand a better chance of seeing those posts.
Plant List
Spruce: Picea genus, Family Pinaceae (Pine family)
- White spruce: Picea glauca
- Red spruce: Picea rubens
- Black spruce: Picea mariana
- Blue spruce, also known as Colorado Blue Spruce: Picea pungens
- Norway spruce: Picea abies
- Sitka spruce: Picea sitchensis
- Engelmann spruce: Picea engelmanni
I write about foraging because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wilderness.
I would like Steemit to be the premier site for Foraging on the Internet! If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post and be sure to use the Foraging tag. And check out the @foraging-trail to see curated quality posts about foraging. Happy Foraging!
Related Posts
If you want to see how my Colorado blue spruce tree held up in a giant ice storm last winter, check out this post: The Great Willamette Valley Ice Storm of '16: Blue Spruce and Redcedar Trees.
If you are interested in eating Pine Trees, here's a post that might help: How To Harvest Pine Pollen.
Yeeeeeeej! So happy to find you here again! I did miss your post very much! Its been almost a year now! Upvoted and resteemed ♡
Yay! Good to see you here, too, @dutchess! I'm so happy to see more friends from TSU come over to Steemit. I think you will like Steemit! Thanks for resteeming my spruce trees. I'll enjoy seeing your flower photos and herb posts! :D
Hi! Yes it makes me happy to see the Tsu fa.re united too! You can read y posts in #aromatherapy
Thanks for the hashtag! That will help a lot. The #foraging and #gardening tags are pretty active, too.
Super- will check them tomorrow! Now off to bed with the third part of Robin Hobs latest trilogy! 😀
Good night there in your part of the world!
put few spoons of honey over freshly collected spruces in a jar its an ancient remedy for most of the respiratory troubles. i bet you dont have these problems, right? try to avoid trees near roads, and definitely aiming for hidden smaller spruces is an important tip. resteem-waiting for more.
Spruce and honey go together really well, so thanks for pointing that out! I'm fortunate to be pretty healthy. Thanks for resteeming, too!
Your posts present a whole new world of food available.. Who taught you this?
There is so much to eat out there! So many plants are just growing out there, waiting for us to appreciate them. My dad had us kids picking grocery bags of pokeweed, dock, and lambs quarters when we got to be about 7 years old. I've learned a lot more plants over the years, from other people, from reading, and from eating a lot, lol. That's the nice thing about foraging -- good food! :D
I am curious how it all tastes. :)
It's just like all the vegetables at the store. They each have their own taste. And some plants have a lot of different harvests, that each taste different, too. There's a whole grocery store out there, lol! :D
Cause everyone needs to SPRUCE up their lives. Great post. Thanks for sharing. Love the idea of the cookies, shortbreads are my favorite. Upvoted
Hahaha -- that's great! Spruce trees have spruced up my life, that's for sure! :D You must have so many spruce up in your area, being in Canada. That's a good deal!
Food must be very interesting with you, sounds fascinating :)
I do eat a lot of things that aren't for sale at any store, but I can pick all I want for free. I'm fortunate to have all these plants around me. And they are growing without much care on my part == so different than my garden, lol.
Your shopping bill will be half of mine :)
It might be even less. I eat a lot of my food from my yard. I have 2 big chest freezers with garden produce and wild food, and a big pantry of food that I preserve, too. I'm fortunate, that's for sure. It has come in handy over the years. It would be nice if everyone had it so easy.
Would be nice to try, I love trying new foods :)
I'm waiting to see you put a few rose petals in your salads, lol! ; )
I don't know if I could lol I might have to force myself just to try them :)
You will have to give us a taste review. In a salad, I think it's hard to even taste them. They just add to the overall flavor. But with a lot of them, their floral taste comes through, if they are a fragrant rose. At least we will all get to see your pretty pink roses!
And he will have a better tan, from the outdoors part, and more nutrition from the not processed, stored for weeks and ruined part, and a good looking place to wander around in on his land.
Very true @sircork :)
Resteemed, upvoted and following. I have plenty of spruce on my land, but my real favorite treat (aside from my abundant wild blackberries) is my heavy growth of wild staghorn sumac. There's an idea for a post for you. :) Staghorn Sumac "ade" is delicious!
That's great that you have so much good eating on your land! Between spruce trees, blackberries, and sumac, you are set for a lot of good eating! I agree about sumac! I use a lot of it, in so many ways. I have Smooth Sumac, though, not the Staghorn Sumac. Any red-berried sumac is worth picking! Thanks for the post idea! I'll do that!
Be wary of white berries! And I look forward to more! Yes, here in the Blue Ridge of western North Carolina, there is NO reason to go hungry. Heck I have to kill so much Polk plant every year, just to have a front yard carved out of the woods, that I throw away more salad every spring with a weedwhacker than a salad bar could use up in a year!
Poke is so good! It has fed so many people over the years. It's one of my top 10 favorite spring greens., for sure. Weedwhackers have destroyed many great salad bars, lol! I'm glad you appreciate all your wild food!
I wish I knew more about all I have to choose from here on my land. If only I could just follow someone knowledgeable who would blog about it from time to time. ;)
hahaha -- I hope you see some plants you recognize in my future posts! ; )
I hope to see one's I don't! yet...
That's what I meant. Maybe you will see a plant in my posts that you have on your land, but hadn't come to know it yet. Here's to all those great plants out there, waiting for us all! :D
Wow that's a first. Thank you for teaching me something new today. Upvoted and followed. Looking forward to the next post.
You're welcome! I hope you get to try eating spruce trees yourself sometime. They have a lot to offer!
Excellent post @haphazard-hstead ! I think I will try the sun tea method it sounds very interesting!
I'd like your taste review, if you try the Spruce Sun Tea! If you like it, don't throw out those softened needles. They are good ingredients to use in making other things, too!
I never even considered eating spruce! This is good to know.
Spruce trees are worth getting to know! And once you know where a few spruce trees are, you can go back every year. That's what's nice about eating from trees -- they don't move around too much, lol.
Haha, that's great! :)
I would like to try to eat spruce tree needles. They do sound very strong tasting, as they smell very strong and pungent as well. Amazing what you can do with so many parts of a tree, and amazing you know so much about this all. I'm beginning to think about 3/4 of the world around us is actually edible, after reading your posts. Thanks for the knowledge and sharing it with us.
So many plants are edible -- not all of them, by a long shot. But a lot of them, one part or another, prepared one way or another. I hope you get to try some spruce yourself!