Cooking with Fir: A Taste of the Holidays

The scent of fir trees is a holiday staple. From seasonal greenery to candles, the aroma heralds “the most wonderful time of the year.”

If you’re looking for a way to immerse yourself even further into the holiday cheer, try introducing fir to your taste buds. From classy cocktails to rustic potatoes, fir adds excellent seasonal flavor. And if you’ve never foraged for fir, don’t worry, we have some tips!

The following recipes are from Forage, Harvest, Feast by Marie Viljoen. It has been adapted for the web.

A Profile on Fir

Other Common Names: Balsam fir, Fraser fir, white fir, Douglas fir, and more

Botanical Names: Abies balsamea, A. fraseri, A, concolor, Pseudotsuga menziesii

Status: Trees native to North America
Where: Eastern, northern, and western America SEASON: Winter through spring, mostly
Use: Aromatic
Parts Used: Needles, cones
Grow? Yes
Tastes Like: Christmas

Fir needles are a relatively recent addition to my wild foods pantry. Since I live in the big city, my first fir forage was truly urban, and quite accidental: an organically grown Christmas tree, sold on a local sidewalk by Windswept Farm, a grower from Vermont.

I did not grow up with northern Christmas trees. My childhood Christmases were spent under blazing summer skies to the sound of swimming pool laughter. Our tree was a statuesque dried agave flower (called garingboom in Afrikaans), painted white. Quite effective, but perfectly dead. Thousands of miles and a hemisphere away, the intensely evocative fragrance of the firs sold on holiday sidewalks in winter Brooklyn is still intoxicating to me. I love the time of year when the tree sellers migrate down from Vermont and Québec and set up their perfumed walk-through shops with twinkly lights. One year, when I was taking down our own tree in January, I was surprised by how strongly scented the needles still were, despite being crisp. I carried a few branches into the kitchen and began plucking. Then I added vodka. That is how a new holiday winter tradition began.

The fir genus is Abies, and it belongs to the pine family (Pinaceae). Many species of Abies are distributed across North America. If their needles are aromatic, and untreated, use them. In the Northeast we most often see balsam (Abies balsamea) and Fraser fir (A. fraseri), as well as hybrids of the two. Well-known Douglas fir—also very useful and scented—is not actually Abies, but Pseudotsuga menziesii.

I now ask for fresh trimmings from organic tree sellers. These branches, clipped from trees cut for customers, are usually given away free, though I would be happy to pay a few dollars for the distinctive flavor that I preserve to use all year, back at home.

Viscously cold fir-infused vodka sends your party in a Nordic direction. And Fir Sugar is an absurdly easy way to preserve the flavor and apply to it to everything from cocktails to dessert: Added to a small batch of fermenting summer elderberries, it makes a liqueur that demands marketing; substitute Fir Sugar in a butter cookie recipe for a holiday snack with a whisper of the North; add a dab of the green sugar to the frosting, too; and use it instead of the regular sugar and vanilla to make a surprising ice cream topped with chocolate sauce.

Fir Salt is a staple in my cured salmon and works very well with duck breast, too, whether in curing or to season a sauce with late-fall chokeberries.

How to Collect and Prepare

If you are wild-harvesting, use clean pruning shears and make a clean, considerate, angled cut. At home cut the fir into lengths that fit inside a jar, and store until needed. Use the needles dried or fresh. When you are processing fresh needles in a spice grinder, wipe the blades immediately with a hot, damp cloth, as the accumulated resin from the needles is very tenacious and will dry hard.

Caution

Know your evergreens. If you are unfamiliar with trees that have green needles, you could possibly mistake toxic yew (Taxus species) for fir. Fir is intensely scented. Yew is not.