Did you know that the new tips of fir and spruce trees are edible? The new growth you’ll find on these conifers tastes like the essence of a springtime forest, and is truly delicious to harness for various recipes.
They’re also fairly easy to identify for those new to foraging. You don’t have to worry about a ton of dangerous lookalikes out there waiting to ruin your meal.
Read on to discover nine tasty ways to eat fir or spruce tips this season.
Where Can I Find Fir or Spruce Tips?
If you’ve been out hiking in the woods in spring and early summertime, you’ve likely noticed bright green, velvety tips on coniferous trees.
Some may still have been encased in brown, papery husks, while others had emerged and were spreading out in the sunshine. This new growth will only stay soft temporarily, before firming into stiff, mature needles.
You’ll find spruce trees growing in temperate and boreal forests throughout the northern hemisphere.
If you’re harvesting fir or spruce tips for the recipes listed below, ensure that you’re only harvesting the fresh new growth. The needles should be soft and pliant and a lighter, brighter green than the mature needles further up the branch.
Please ensure that you harvest responsibly: no more than a small handful of tips from any one tree, and only in areas where the conifers grow quite densely. Never harvest the main growing tip as this will stop the tree’s upward growth.
You should also be double, triple sure you’re harvesting from a spruce or fir tree. While they don’t look extremely similar, there are a few toxic evergreen species out there that a beginner might mistake for edible species.
For example, yews are extremely toxic and, at first glance, might be mistaken for a fir since both have flat needles. Just be careful and maybe bring along a good tree identification guide.
This guide to the trees of the Northwest by Stephen Arno has a handy flowchart to help you figure out what you’re looking at. Or grab a beginner’s guide to help you navigate the trees of the Northeast.
Bring a container to collect your bounty and maybe some scissors or a knife. Once you have your fir or spruce tips, these recipes will help you make the most of them:
1. Pickled Spruce Tips
Spruce tips have a lovely lemony-evergreen flavor that lends very well to pickling. You can use them in the same way that you’d use gherkins or capers, such as mincing them finely and mixing them into cream cheese to spread on bagels, or adding them to tuna salad, etc.
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup white vinegar
- 2 cups pale green spruce tips, newly emerged from their husks and rinsed well
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp salt
Sterilize a couple of half-pint canning jars in boiling water, along with a couple of canning lids and bands. Remove the clean jars with some jar lifters, empty out the water, and then fill them with the washed spruce tips. Don’t pack them in too tightly.
Next, heat the ingredients above in a saucepan until everything has dissolved nicely and you attain an enthusiastic boil. Pour this boiling liquid into the jars, leaving around a half-inch of headspace.
Use a clean chopstick or stir stick to move the contents around to release any air bubbles. The spruce tips should be completely submerged: if they aren’t, top up with a bit more vinegar.
Once that’s done, wipe the rims clean with a damp cloth, put on the sterilized lids, and use the bands to tighten them in place.
Allow these to cool for eight to 12 hours, and get giddy little thrills if and when the lids make a “popping” noise and draw downwards to show you that they’ve sealed properly. If they have, you can keep them in the pantry for a couple of years. If not, keep them in the fridge and use them up within a few weeks.
2. Infused Vinegar
Another way to use fir or spruce tips in a savory manner is to infuse vinegar with them. You’ve likely done this before with various other herbs like tarragon or thyme, and you can capture the flavor of these conifer tips the same way.
Fill a sterilized canning jar with spruce tips, but keep them loose: don’t pack them in tightly. Then heat three cups of apple cider or white wine vinegar in a saucepan until it reaches a boiling point. Pour this vinegar into the jar, ensuring that all of the fir or spruce tips are covered.
If they aren’t, just top them up with a bit more vinegar.
Seal this up with a lid, allow it to cool, and store it in a dark cupboard or cabinet for four to six weeks. That will give the vinegar sufficient time to absorb all the flavors.
After four to six weeks, strain out the tips, decant the liquid into a pretty bottle. Use the liquid in salads, dips, or whatever other recipes you like.
3. Coniferous Cream Cheese
Okay, that may not sound like the most appealing title in the world, but the end result is really quite lovely.
Take an eight-ounce block or container of your favorite cream cheese, soft goat cheese, or vegan alternative (like spreadable Tofutti), spoon it into a mixing bowl, and allow it to warm to room temperature.
Next, mince a quarter cup of fresh or pickled spruce tips, depending on your flavor preference, as well as whatever other herbs you’d like to add to this. Chives work well, as do parsley and dill.
Mix the herbs into the now-softened cream cheese, and add salt to taste, as well as garlic powder and/or black pepper if desired. Blend together well, and feel free to add a tablespoon of sour cream or Greek yogurt to make it creamier.
Alternatively, you can omit the cream or yogurt, form the mixture into a log, and then roll it around on some additional minced herbs.
Then, you can use it as a spread on your favorite bagels, toss it with pasta, eat it by the slice, and so on.
4. Spruce Tips Syrup
Transforming fir or spruce tips into syrup is an ideal way to capture their green, almost citrusy flavor for sweet applications.
Fill a small pot or saucepan with chopped spruce tips, and cover with water. Bring this to a boil, cover the pot, and then reduce the heat to a low simmer for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, allow to cool slightly, then strain through a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth.
Wash the pot to eliminate any residue, and then measure the amount of infused liquid you have. Return the liquid to the saucepan and add an equal amount of white granulated sugar. Heat this on medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves, and then decant the liquid into a sterilized jar.
Once cooled, it can be stored in the fridge for up to a month.
5. Jelly
If you’ve harvested a significant amount of fir or spruce tips, consider transforming some of that simple syrup into jelly.
You only need to add lemon or lime juice and pectin to the syrup so it solidifies into a spreadable substance. This is gorgeous on toast, piped into donuts, or spread between layers of pound cake.
Follow this recipe from Creative Canning for full step-by-step instructions on making and preserving this gorgeous jelly.
If you like spreadable deliciousness, be sure to read our article on 43 delicious jelly and jam recipes for additional ideas.
6. Ice Cream Made with Fir or Spruce Tips
If you have a sweet tooth and would like to try more tasty spruce-infused treats, consider trying this ice cream recipe from The Forager Chef. It won’t work with vegan cream or egg substitutes, but if you’re okay with dairy and you love delicious frozen desserts, it’s definitely one to add to your culinary repertoire.
This ice cream is a perfect addition to a woodland-themed birthday party menu, especially if you garnish it with some edible “moss” and chocolate-covered pretzel “twigs.”
7. Spruce Beer
If you like different beers and you’re fond of homemade fermented goods, try your hand at making spruce beer. It has a light, lemony flavor that’s perfect for hot summer days and isn’t quite as bitter as hoppy beers.
Try this recipe from Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment if you’re feeling adventurous!
8. Soda Made with Fir or Spruce Tips
If you don’t drink alcohol but you’d still like to try a refreshing, conifer-flavored beverage, then you may be interested in trying spruce tip soda. It’s a popular drink throughout the eastern USA and Canada and is remarkably good as the base for a float with vanilla ice cream (dairy or vegan).
Try this recipe from Appalachian Ground:
- Snip off any woody ends of the spruce tips.
- Rinse lightly.
- Fill jars about 3/4 full of spruce tips, and 2 to 4 tablespoons of sugar per cup of water.
- Keep warm and covered for a week or so. (If the yeasts are warm, well-fed, and energetic, you’ll need to “burp” your jars.)
Taste the soda after a few days to see if it’s still sweet, but also sufficiently carbonated. The natural yeasts that will make this soda bubbly will also feed on the sugars you added, so you may need to add a bit of simple syrup to make up for any lost sweetness.
If you’d like to ensure that you don’t lose any flavor in the process, consider sweetening your soda with some of the infused syrup mentioned earlier in this article.
A Note on Harvesting Fir and Spruce Tips Safely
As with all other types of foraging, please ensure that you identify trees correctly before harvesting from them.
Remember, various coniferous species can look quite similar to the untrained eye, and people can end up poisoning themselves by harvesting toxic lookalike species. For example, highly poisonous yew needles can easily be mistaken for fir, to disastrous results.
If you aren’t absolutely certain of the conifers you’re interested in harvesting from, then it’s best to go out foraging with a trained guide instead.
Alternatively, many farmer’s markets offer wildcrafted foods gathered by expert foragers and bushcrafters. It’s always better to err on the side of caution, rather than risk potential serious illness or death.
