The flavor of wild
by Caroline Cummins, special to The Oregonian
Tuesday August 26, 2008, 12:05 AM
Given its familiarity in American pop culture, it's strange that so few of us have ever noticed, much less tasted, the huckleberry.
Caroline Cummins
You know who Huckleberry Finn is, the iconic rascal invented by novelist Mark Twain. You've seen Huckleberry Hound, the 1950s cartoon dog with the blue fur and Southern accent. And if you've watched the classic film "Breakfast at Tiffany's," you can probably warble "Moon River," the ballad Audrey Hepburn croons to "my huckleberry friend."
But what makes the huckleberry -- a relative of the blueberry, a perennially popular summertime fruit -- so elusive? Chiefly, the fact that the huckleberry -- unlike the more cooperative blueberry -- is tough to grow on command. Which means that if you want fresh huckleberries, you'll have to pick them yourself. In the wild.
Recipes included with this story: Huckleberry Streusel Bars, Huckleberry Chutney, Greg's Huckleberry Pie
"Imagine eating wildness," rhapsodizes 'Asta Bowen in her 1998 handbook "The Huckleberry Book." "You can take the huckleberry out of the mountains, but you can't take the mountains out of the huckleberry."
A fresh mountain huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) looks like a small, dark, shiny blueberry, but it tastes like a blueberry gone mad: tarter, sweeter, juicier, more intense in every way.
"It's a very complex flavor," says Dan Barney, a horticulture professor and huckleberry expert at the University of Idaho. Some 35 chemicals, he says, go into the flavor of huckleberries. And unlike blueberries, which have dry skins and little aroma, huckleberries tend to leak their juices when picked, making for a stronger scent.
Mike Davis/The OregonianHuckleberry Streusel BarsThe ooze factor also means that fresh huckleberries have a short shelf life. "You want to clean and refrigerate them as soon as you can," Barney says. Cooking the berries down into jam or other preserves is popular; so is freezing individual berries for later use in muffins, pancakes and the like. Barney likes to wash and dry the berries, then freeze them on cookie sheets lined with wax paper.
But before you can eat, cook or freeze huckleberries, you have to find 'em. They make occasional appearances at farmers markets, but the cheapest and most fun option is to pick them yourself. And since, as Barney says, huckleberries grow best between 4,000 and 6,000 feet above sea level, you're going to have to climb to find them.
In the Northwest, the tastiest huckleberries ripen in late August and September on alpine slopes in plenty of sunshine. They grow in both the Cascades and the Coast Range, but good picking areas vary from year to year -- and diehard pickers, of course, seldom share their favorite spots.
If you're a novice picker, says Frank Duran, the Portland-based special forest products program manager for Oregon and Washington's national forests, just choose a day for your berry expedition, call a ranger station in the nearest national forest, and ask for the best picking locations that day. Or you can stop by a ranger station on your way into the woods; the ranger stations at Mount Hood National Forest, for example, provide a pink, photocopied huckleberry booklet with suggested picking areas as well as recipes.
That's essentially what my husband and I did over Labor Day weekend last year. After loading up our car with water, lunch, bags and two friends, we drove southeast from Portland into the foothills of Mount Hood. We picked up huckleberry handouts at a ranger station and crunched up one of the gravel Forest Service roads that roll away from the Frog Lake parking lot.
Through the dust thrown up by our car we could see short, shrubby little huckleberry bushes edging the road, reaching for the sunlight that fell on the roadside ditch. But even from the car, we could tell: no berries.
Persistence pays off We kept jouncing along, as the gravel road wound up and up. After a few miles, we had left the tall forest and tiny shrubs behind; the flora changed to scrubbier conifers and sprawly manzanita bushes. We had gone too far and too high, and the huckleberries were gone. So we edged the car around and rolled back down.
"As you're out in the woods earlier in the year doing other things -- fishing, hiking, picnicking, driving around -- you start looking at the bushes," says Duran. "You'll find yourself saying, 'Ah, there's a good spot to come back to in the fall.'"
But we hadn't planned ahead, and now it was already September. A mile or so from the parking lot, frustrated, we pulled over at one of the clear-cuts lining the road. The cuts were old, the stumps bleached and scarred by fire. Clumps of fountain-like beargrass sprouted among the pale gray snags. We didn't know it, but we were looking at prime huckleberry territory: an older clear-cut with signs of an old burn, filled in with beargrass. (See accompanying story for more picking tips.)
The huckleberry bushes here were taller, but their leaves were edged with the rust of early fall. We strolled along the road, eyes scanning the shrubbery. Hey, wait -- here's a berry. Oh, it's so sweet! And another. What about these -- no, sorry, those are Oregon grapes, not so tasty. Bah.
We picked a few tiny, purplish-blue berries and ate them out of hand. They made us hungry, so we sat on a log and ate lunch and discussed which hike to take to salvage the afternoon.
Determined to find more berries, one of our friends clambered off into the clear-cut, hat firmly shading her from the sun. She didn't come back. We started calling her name and walking back along the road, until she suddenly hopped out from the brush, waving a bag heavy with berries.
Pay dirt. Along the far side of the clear-cut, where the clearing met the forest, the berries were thriving. The bushes weren't tall, and we had to stoop and squat to pick them. But each bush was laden, and we greedily swept our hands over each bush, ripping the tiny berries from each branch.
Etiquette for posterity
Caroline CumminsLike a wild, free-spirited sibling, huckleberries may look like blueberries but they're much more complex -- and not easily tamed. "My grandfather taught me to pick," says Barney. "The etiquette I was taught was, pick some for yourself, leave some for the wildlife and leave some for the next pickers coming through. One hundred years from now, I want my grandson to be teaching his grandson, taking him to the same places to pick. I don't want that resource to be destroyed."
Duran agrees that there are many demands on the huckleberry: wildlife such as bears, Native American tribes for whom the huckleberry is culturally significant, and commercial and recreational pickers. Trying to maintain a healthy balance, he says, can be tricky. "You see competition for berries in lean years," he says. "Hopefully every year we have lots of berries to go around for everybody."
In that clear-cut last fall, we slowly succumbed to the calm, steady rhythm of the harvest: eyes riveted only on the dark dots that signified berries, feet stepping carefully and slowly over logs and bushes, four people moving slowly up a hillside. Food, for free. We felt triumphantly atavistic, like we'd become Neolithic hunter-gatherers all over again.
The sunlight changed from bright to mellow and the picking slowed. We headed back to the car and piled our loot into a plastic box. Four pounds -- a serious haul for novice pickers who had never tasted huckleberries before. We drove home, the berries slowly softening into mush.
With the leaves rinsed off and the berries cooked down with some sugar and apple over the stove, the chewy little circles melted into a dark, syrupy, tangy jam. Four pounds became four jams, just enough for four contented people.Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of the food Web site Culinate.
Huckleberry picking tips Huckleberry season in Oregon usually begins by August and ends by mid-September, but because of the long, cold spring this year, the season is expected to extend through September. • Call ahead to find out whether the area you're heading to charges picking fees.
• Dress appropriately (you're basically going on a dirty hike, after all) and bring food, water and extra clothes. If you start wandering off into the hills, pay attention to where you are so you don't get lost.
• Huckleberries like slopes, sunshine and plenty of water, so look for open areas: clear-cuts, old burns and under power lines. The berries take several years to fill in an open area after a clear-cut or a burn, so don't look for them in recently burned or logged areas.
• Beargrass, serviceberry, hemlock and Pacific silver fir are all "indicator species," or plants that indicate the likely presence nearby of huckleberries.
• Pick uphill. You'll be able to see the berries underneath their leaves more easily, and you'll have a triumphant stroll back downhill with your loot when you're done. Pick by hand. Rakes can damage bushes.
• Buckets, bags or other containers with lids or easy closures prevent berry loss if you trip while picking.
• You probably won't see any black bears, but if you do, give them a wide berth.
• Don't pick on tribal lands (such as the Warm Springs land near Mount Hood or designated sections of the Sawtooth Berry Fields in Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest) unless you have the right to do so.
• Finally, don't dig up any huckleberry bushes to take home for transplant. You'll just kill both the plant you brought home and the plant you hacked apart in the woods. If you really want to grow your own, use seeds from ripe fruit and germinate the seeds. Taking the wild out of huckleberries For two decades, the University of Idaho's Dan Barney has been working to develop a domesticated huckleberry, a predictably reliable plant you can grow at home. He's hoping to have plants available by 2012. "We've been working with domesticating blueberries since 1906, so we're behind on development of a domesticated huckleberry crop," he says. "But call me back in 100 years and we'll be in really good shape
by Caroline Cummins, special to The Oregonian
Tuesday August 26, 2008, 12:05 AM
Given its familiarity in American pop culture, it's strange that so few of us have ever noticed, much less tasted, the huckleberry.
Caroline Cummins
You know who Huckleberry Finn is, the iconic rascal invented by novelist Mark Twain. You've seen Huckleberry Hound, the 1950s cartoon dog with the blue fur and Southern accent. And if you've watched the classic film "Breakfast at Tiffany's," you can probably warble "Moon River," the ballad Audrey Hepburn croons to "my huckleberry friend."
But what makes the huckleberry -- a relative of the blueberry, a perennially popular summertime fruit -- so elusive? Chiefly, the fact that the huckleberry -- unlike the more cooperative blueberry -- is tough to grow on command. Which means that if you want fresh huckleberries, you'll have to pick them yourself. In the wild.
Recipes included with this story: Huckleberry Streusel Bars, Huckleberry Chutney, Greg's Huckleberry Pie
"Imagine eating wildness," rhapsodizes 'Asta Bowen in her 1998 handbook "The Huckleberry Book." "You can take the huckleberry out of the mountains, but you can't take the mountains out of the huckleberry."
A fresh mountain huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) looks like a small, dark, shiny blueberry, but it tastes like a blueberry gone mad: tarter, sweeter, juicier, more intense in every way.
"It's a very complex flavor," says Dan Barney, a horticulture professor and huckleberry expert at the University of Idaho. Some 35 chemicals, he says, go into the flavor of huckleberries. And unlike blueberries, which have dry skins and little aroma, huckleberries tend to leak their juices when picked, making for a stronger scent.
Mike Davis/The OregonianHuckleberry Streusel BarsThe ooze factor also means that fresh huckleberries have a short shelf life. "You want to clean and refrigerate them as soon as you can," Barney says. Cooking the berries down into jam or other preserves is popular; so is freezing individual berries for later use in muffins, pancakes and the like. Barney likes to wash and dry the berries, then freeze them on cookie sheets lined with wax paper.
But before you can eat, cook or freeze huckleberries, you have to find 'em. They make occasional appearances at farmers markets, but the cheapest and most fun option is to pick them yourself. And since, as Barney says, huckleberries grow best between 4,000 and 6,000 feet above sea level, you're going to have to climb to find them.
In the Northwest, the tastiest huckleberries ripen in late August and September on alpine slopes in plenty of sunshine. They grow in both the Cascades and the Coast Range, but good picking areas vary from year to year -- and diehard pickers, of course, seldom share their favorite spots.
If you're a novice picker, says Frank Duran, the Portland-based special forest products program manager for Oregon and Washington's national forests, just choose a day for your berry expedition, call a ranger station in the nearest national forest, and ask for the best picking locations that day. Or you can stop by a ranger station on your way into the woods; the ranger stations at Mount Hood National Forest, for example, provide a pink, photocopied huckleberry booklet with suggested picking areas as well as recipes.
That's essentially what my husband and I did over Labor Day weekend last year. After loading up our car with water, lunch, bags and two friends, we drove southeast from Portland into the foothills of Mount Hood. We picked up huckleberry handouts at a ranger station and crunched up one of the gravel Forest Service roads that roll away from the Frog Lake parking lot.
Through the dust thrown up by our car we could see short, shrubby little huckleberry bushes edging the road, reaching for the sunlight that fell on the roadside ditch. But even from the car, we could tell: no berries.
Persistence pays off We kept jouncing along, as the gravel road wound up and up. After a few miles, we had left the tall forest and tiny shrubs behind; the flora changed to scrubbier conifers and sprawly manzanita bushes. We had gone too far and too high, and the huckleberries were gone. So we edged the car around and rolled back down.
"As you're out in the woods earlier in the year doing other things -- fishing, hiking, picnicking, driving around -- you start looking at the bushes," says Duran. "You'll find yourself saying, 'Ah, there's a good spot to come back to in the fall.'"
But we hadn't planned ahead, and now it was already September. A mile or so from the parking lot, frustrated, we pulled over at one of the clear-cuts lining the road. The cuts were old, the stumps bleached and scarred by fire. Clumps of fountain-like beargrass sprouted among the pale gray snags. We didn't know it, but we were looking at prime huckleberry territory: an older clear-cut with signs of an old burn, filled in with beargrass. (See accompanying story for more picking tips.)
The huckleberry bushes here were taller, but their leaves were edged with the rust of early fall. We strolled along the road, eyes scanning the shrubbery. Hey, wait -- here's a berry. Oh, it's so sweet! And another. What about these -- no, sorry, those are Oregon grapes, not so tasty. Bah.
We picked a few tiny, purplish-blue berries and ate them out of hand. They made us hungry, so we sat on a log and ate lunch and discussed which hike to take to salvage the afternoon.
Determined to find more berries, one of our friends clambered off into the clear-cut, hat firmly shading her from the sun. She didn't come back. We started calling her name and walking back along the road, until she suddenly hopped out from the brush, waving a bag heavy with berries.
Pay dirt. Along the far side of the clear-cut, where the clearing met the forest, the berries were thriving. The bushes weren't tall, and we had to stoop and squat to pick them. But each bush was laden, and we greedily swept our hands over each bush, ripping the tiny berries from each branch.
Etiquette for posterity
Caroline CumminsLike a wild, free-spirited sibling, huckleberries may look like blueberries but they're much more complex -- and not easily tamed. "My grandfather taught me to pick," says Barney. "The etiquette I was taught was, pick some for yourself, leave some for the wildlife and leave some for the next pickers coming through. One hundred years from now, I want my grandson to be teaching his grandson, taking him to the same places to pick. I don't want that resource to be destroyed."
Duran agrees that there are many demands on the huckleberry: wildlife such as bears, Native American tribes for whom the huckleberry is culturally significant, and commercial and recreational pickers. Trying to maintain a healthy balance, he says, can be tricky. "You see competition for berries in lean years," he says. "Hopefully every year we have lots of berries to go around for everybody."
In that clear-cut last fall, we slowly succumbed to the calm, steady rhythm of the harvest: eyes riveted only on the dark dots that signified berries, feet stepping carefully and slowly over logs and bushes, four people moving slowly up a hillside. Food, for free. We felt triumphantly atavistic, like we'd become Neolithic hunter-gatherers all over again.
The sunlight changed from bright to mellow and the picking slowed. We headed back to the car and piled our loot into a plastic box. Four pounds -- a serious haul for novice pickers who had never tasted huckleberries before. We drove home, the berries slowly softening into mush.
With the leaves rinsed off and the berries cooked down with some sugar and apple over the stove, the chewy little circles melted into a dark, syrupy, tangy jam. Four pounds became four jams, just enough for four contented people.Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of the food Web site Culinate.
Huckleberry picking tips Huckleberry season in Oregon usually begins by August and ends by mid-September, but because of the long, cold spring this year, the season is expected to extend through September. • Call ahead to find out whether the area you're heading to charges picking fees.
• Dress appropriately (you're basically going on a dirty hike, after all) and bring food, water and extra clothes. If you start wandering off into the hills, pay attention to where you are so you don't get lost.
• Huckleberries like slopes, sunshine and plenty of water, so look for open areas: clear-cuts, old burns and under power lines. The berries take several years to fill in an open area after a clear-cut or a burn, so don't look for them in recently burned or logged areas.
• Beargrass, serviceberry, hemlock and Pacific silver fir are all "indicator species," or plants that indicate the likely presence nearby of huckleberries.
• Pick uphill. You'll be able to see the berries underneath their leaves more easily, and you'll have a triumphant stroll back downhill with your loot when you're done. Pick by hand. Rakes can damage bushes.
• Buckets, bags or other containers with lids or easy closures prevent berry loss if you trip while picking.
• You probably won't see any black bears, but if you do, give them a wide berth.
• Don't pick on tribal lands (such as the Warm Springs land near Mount Hood or designated sections of the Sawtooth Berry Fields in Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest) unless you have the right to do so.
• Finally, don't dig up any huckleberry bushes to take home for transplant. You'll just kill both the plant you brought home and the plant you hacked apart in the woods. If you really want to grow your own, use seeds from ripe fruit and germinate the seeds. Taking the wild out of huckleberries For two decades, the University of Idaho's Dan Barney has been working to develop a domesticated huckleberry, a predictably reliable plant you can grow at home. He's hoping to have plants available by 2012. "We've been working with domesticating blueberries since 1906, so we're behind on development of a domesticated huckleberry crop," he says. "But call me back in 100 years and we'll be in really good shape
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