Fiddlehead and Spring Greens Soup with Pesto
A wild spring vegetable soup built for a camp pot, finished with a spoonful of pesto.
- calories
- 330
- weight
- 5.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 60
- protein
- 16 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 30 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- 1100 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Lunch
- Canister stove
- Campfire coals
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Gluten free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Olive oil | 3 tbsp | lard works if you carry it in a cooler |
|---|---|---|
| Fiddleheads | 2 oz | ostrich or lady fern, papery husk rubbed off |
| Ramp bulbs and stems | 1 cup sliced | green onions plus a clove of garlic if you have no ramps |
| Freeze-dried ground beef or shelf-stable summer sausage | 12 oz | dried mushrooms, 2 oz, for a meatless pot |
| Parsnips or sunchokes | 4 oz | peeled and cut small at home |
| Dry white wine | 1/2 cup | decanted into a small bottle; skip it and use extra broth |
| Bouillon | enough for 4.5 cups | powder, not cubes, dissolves faster |
| Ramp leaves | 2 oz | chopped |
| Mixed greens | 2 oz | nettles, young dock, spring beauty |
| Cooked beans | 1/2 cup | canned or rehydrated, optional |
| Pesto | 1/2 cup | ramp leaf or nettle pesto, no cheese so it keeps |
| Kosher salt | to taste |
Method
- Boil water in the pot. Drop the fiddleheads in for one minute, then scoop them out and set them aside. Fiddleheads must be cooked through; do not skip this.
- Dump the blanching water. Heat the oil in the pot and brown the meat in small pieces until it has real color. Add the ramp bulbs and cook one more minute.
- Pour in the wine and let it cook down by half. It scrapes the browned bits off the bottom, which is where the broth flavor comes from.
- Add 4.5 cups of water, the bouillon, the parsnips, the beans, and a pinch of salt. Simmer about 15 minutes, until the parsnips give to a spoon.
- Stir in the fiddleheads, ramp leaves, and greens. Cook until the greens collapse, a minute or two.
- Salt it, then spoon pesto over each bowl. Do not stir the pesto into the pot; it goes flat with heat.
This is a spring soup that happens to work in a camp pot, which is most of the reason to make it. Everything except the wild greens can be carried dry: bouillon instead of stock, freeze-dried beef or a stick of summer sausage instead of fresh meat, parsnips prepped at home. What you pick up on the walk in is the part that matters.
The method is doing the work, not the ingredient list. Browning the meat hard and deglazing with wine builds a broth out of nothing but water and bouillon. The pesto goes on at the table because heat kills it. Skip the cream that shows up in most fiddlehead soups; fat from the oil and the pesto is enough, and cream is a bad idea without a fridge anyway.
Packing
Bouillon, dried mushrooms, and salt go in one bag. Parsnips get peeled and cut at home so camp is one knife-free step. Pesto rides in a screw-top jar with a film of oil on top. Wine goes in a small plastic bottle, not glass.
Variations
- No foraged greens: use 2 oz of dried spinach or kale flakes and stir them in with the fiddleheads.
- Skip the meat and use 12 oz of chopped fresh mushrooms or 2 oz dried, browned hard in the oil first.
- Add a handful of instant rice or small pasta at the simmer step if you need this to be more than a first course.
https://foragerchef.com/wild-spring-vegetable-soup-aux-pistou