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Foraging Wild Food For Beginners

Published: Aug 11, 2017 · Modified: Jul 19, 2021 by Alice · This post may contain affiliate links · 5 Comments

Foraging Wild Food For Beginners In Summer & Fall
How To Pick Elderberries To Make Syrup

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pickThis post includes affliate links, read here how these work.

My little picky eater happily munches blackthorn berries from the hedgerows.

She won't touch a banana. Or an orange.

But hand picked sourer-than-lemon sloes she gobbles by the handful!

What's with that?

Part of it's taste. Of course.

But another big part of it - I reckon - is that she picked it herself.

When she was tiny she would turn her nose up at shop bought blackberries.

But devour them when we went blackberrying.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

Maybe it's some deep primordial instinct kicking in?

Food you've picked yourself with your family is to be trusted.

Stuff from who knows where - not so much.

I dunno. But anyway, you know what?

Foraging is a totally fab way to have a fun day out with the kids.

You get to spend hours outdoors, pottering and exploring.

Chatting away as you gobble yummy stuff.

And just slowing down.

But isn't it all a bit complicated AND dangerous?

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

Honestly, not at all!

It's much easier than you think to find yummy stuff in your local countryside.

Plus ALL the stuff you can forage in autumn is packed full of the immune boosting vitamins the whole family needs to survive the winter. How clever is nature?!!

And as long as you and your kids follow these simple foraging tips it's perfectly safe.

Simple Foraging Tips For Kids

  1. Only eat stuff you've been told you can eat by a grown up
  2. Only eat stuff if you're really sure you know what it is - if in doubt don't
  3. Don't eat stuff low down that a dog might have weed on - !!! - until washed at home

These are the foraging tips my mum taught me when I was little.

And they are basically all kids need to know.

Although, obviously with little kids you need to keep an eagle eye on what goes in their mouth.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

OK. So you are on for a bit of foraging fun with your kids.

But what can you actually pick? And what can you do with it?

Well, I've detailed some of our faves below.

And nearly all of these are amazing in jams and jellies and chutneys.

Just borrow a jam pan (USA) plus a jelly strainer as they make it super easy to make your own.

You can also add all the fruit and nuts to pies, cakes and crumbles.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

If you want recipes Nigel Slater is your man!

His Tender book (USA) is full of foraged fruit recipes.

It's one of the few recipe books these days I use over and over.

But what can you actually pick?

Well, obviously it will vary depending where you are.

But these are our favourite things to forage as a family.

What To Forage For Beginners

1. Blackberries

Blackberries are probably the easiest thing to forage as a beginner or with kids.

They're everywhere. The local park. The woods. By the beach.

Just inviting little hands to pick and gobble.

You'll find all the blackberrying tips you need here.

Blackberrying tips - everything you need to know about picking blackberries with kids

2. Damsons

These dark bluey jewels are like a small, dense plum.

But more tangy and flavoursome.

They're brilliant in crumbles and pies.

But with chocolate they are divine!

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

They do grow quite high in the hedges, so take a stick to bend branches down.

Or someone with long arms!

3. Elderberries

Elderberries are best eaten cooked.

And eating too many raw - and unripe - could make kids sick.

You want them black. Not green.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

But these beauties are absolute super foods for fighting colds and sinus infections.

You can add them to recipes with blackberries.

Or to really enjoy them make elderberry jelly ...

or syrup ...

4. Crab Apples

There's a crab apple tree in the tiny wood next to my parents house.

And every autumn we get the whole crop. No one else seems to know their secrets.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

They are not pretty. They are sour raw.

But they make the best jelly ever!

Yummy in tarts and cakes for kids. But also good with meat and cheese.

5. Sloes

Now these babies ARE sour!

BUT they are super full of vitamin C and antioxidents.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

I have to confess the sloes we forage tend to go into sloe gin.

Which is not so good for kids, is it?

But sloe syrup is actually much easier and quicker to make.

And can be dolloped on ice cream, added to puddings and stews and used as medicine.

AS WELL AS being added to gin, vodka and champagne!

Which you have to admit, takes some beating!

6. Cobnuts

Our cobnuts usually come from our local old school green grocer.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

But this year we have found our own secret wild supply.

Right here in London.

And NO. We are not telling where!

They are so lovely and creamy and yummier for most kids than ordinary hazel nuts.

And even the kids who don't like eating them.

Will have fun picking and peeling them.

7. Sweet Chestnuts

Sweet chestnuts are not so much fun to peel.

Foraging with kids - simple safety tips for foraging with kids including best fruit and nuts to pick

They really are prickly.

And gardening gloves are a good idea to protect little fingers!

But you don't need lots. Just a couple of handfuls.

To pop in the oven. Or on a little campfire in the back garden. And eat hot.

What could be lovelier?

So there you go, everything you need to know about foraging with kids.

I hope you have fun if you give it a go. Let me know how you get on.

Foraging Wild Food For Beginners
Picking Elderberries For Free
Foraging Wild Food For Beginners

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    Fall Leaf Craft

Comments

  1. Helen @ Fuss Free Flavours says

    August 13, 2017 at 12:01 pm

    Great article on the delights of foraging. Thanks for the link to my sloe syrup.

    Reply
    • Alice says

      August 18, 2017 at 9:17 am

      So glad you liked Helen - I've been raving to my mum about your syrup recipe. I think I've convinced her not to put all the sloes in the gin this year 🙂

      Reply
  2. A Magical Life says

    February 20, 2019 at 6:56 pm

    We've been foraging as a family for about 15 years now and it's such a blessing for our family. Wild foods are tasty, healthy, nutritious and free, and foraging gets us all out in nature together. I put out a free nature magazine for kids (and their grown ups) where my kids and I share foraging information and other nature fun if anybody would like to learn more about foraging with kids. There are also coloring pages, nature poems and other seasonal nature goodness. You can read it or print it here (nothing to sign up for or buy, just free for anyone who can use it): http://magicalchildhood.com/wildkids/

    Reply
  3. Michelle says

    July 19, 2020 at 4:46 am

    Hello, so happy to have found you. I've neen looking for sweet edible violets plants for my yard and pastries for 3 years ago i looked for 2 years and gave up. I ordered seeds from Belgium & the UK, one package wasn't viable and the other looked like crushed saltine crackers when i got them it looked as if customs stepped on my envelope and spun around or maybe it was a scam. So i quit trying to order. I couldn't find flats of violets at nurseries. Could anyone please tell me where i can order either live plants or violet seeds. We miss them. We'd like to make the jelly & candies. Thanks so much.

    Reply
  4. Sylvia says

    August 13, 2022 at 4:33 am

    Sweet chestnuts - put the prickly shell on the ground and lightly tread it open with your shoes on. It usually pops open and you can pick out the nuts.

    Reply

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Foraging Wild Food For Beginners In Summer & Fall
How To Pick Elderberries To Make Syrup
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How To Pick Elderberries To Make Syrup
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