The Wildcrafted Cocktail: Make Your Own Foraged Syrups, Bitters, Infusions, and Garnishes

by Ellen Zachos

Meet the natural lovechild of the popular local-foods movement and craft cocktail scene. It’s here to show you just how easy it is to make delicious, one-of-a-kind mixed drinks with common flowers, berries, roots, and leaves that you can find along roadsides or in your backyard. Foraging expert Ellen Zachos gets the party started with recipes for more than 50 garnishes, syrups, infusions, juices, and bitters, including Quick Pickled Daylily Buds, Rose Hip Syrup, and Chanterelle-infused Rum. You’ll then incorporate your handcrafted components into 45 surprising and delightful cocktails, such as Stinger in the Rye, Don’t Sass Me, and Tree-tini. 

Genres: Food, Cookbooks, Cooking, Nature, Nonfiction, Food and Drink, The United States Of America

233 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe College, Ms. Zachos resides in New York.

Reviews

[- The Polybrary - · Rating 5 out of 5]

RTC.

[Alex Can Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an e-ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

Some of these recipes sound seriously delicious. Others, like the Hobbit Hollow, which features acorn and mushroom flavors sound like Radagast the Brown wrote them (as a friend commented when I read her the recipe) and I'm not entirely sure they're flavors I'm willing to try. I'm enthusiastically waiting for the weather in the Pacific Northwest to warm up so that I may try foraging for some of the ingredients needed to make some of these tasty sounding cocktails and infusions!

I'll be honest, foraging for some of the ingredients used in the book is more work than I'll ever be willing to put in, but there's a nice selection of recipes I can make from things I have easy enough access to in my own yard or friends' yards. I haven't yet made any of the recipes because the ones I want to try are out of season, but I'm looking forward to when they are in season and I can try them out! The recipes are easy enough to follow and I anticipate interesting tasting results!

This book was beautifully designed with lovely photographs and a fun Northwest style throughout the book, even though it's inclusive of foraged foods from other regions of the country. My only gripe is that I wish recipes had some kind of visual cue as to what season to forage the ingredients in. So many of the foraged ingredients are seasonal, it would be nice to have an at-a-glance way to tell what recipes I can make in each season, rather than having to research every ingredient before I can decide what to make when. I appreciated the responsible foraging tips Zachos included throughout.

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"To make nettle cordial, strain the pot liquor through cheesecloth or a very fine mesh strainer to catch all the bits and pieces of nettle leaf."

While this is an informative book about foraging all of the recipes seem pretty labor intensive.

There is a disclaimer in the beginning about being sure you know what you're picking which is kind of a big deal and yet there aren't a lot of pictures throughout the book which I imagine would be helpful. There's a good variety of drinks but like I said all of them are pretty unique and require a lot of prep. While the persimmon margarita sounds delicious I don't see myself drinking a cocktail based around mushrooms or acorns.

This is a good guide for adventurous drinkers who are willing to put some work into their drinking.

[Naj · Rating 2 out of 5]

The organization of this book was a little odd. Also, it would have been considerably more useful if the description for each wildcrafted ingredient had included basic information such as where they're found and when they're in season. I gleaned a couple ideas for things to try with plants I'm already familiar with, but that was about it.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I’d want to have a tutorial on foraging before I attempted most of the cocktails in this book, but it was chock full of information and includes beautiful photos of drinks & their ingredients.

[Julia Monti · Rating 5 out of 5]

inspiring uses of unique ingredients and nicely laid out with colorful photos. i can’t wait to play with some of these recipes when spring comes. it’s a recipe book not a guide for foraging some reviews seem confused.

[Brooke Dierkhising · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever and inspired drinks. Easy to understand recipes. I especially liked that there were adaptations for non-alcohol versions.

[Haley · Rating 3 out of 5]

books like this are..... aspirational. but it did inspire a trip to the native plant nursery where I picked up wild ginger, elderberry, milkweed, and a court of bramble berries. so there's that

[Ashley Kempkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this, graphics, information all good!!!

[Erica Gentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm very harsh but honest with reviews; with that being said, I loved this book. Mostly the pickling of odd garnishes blew my mind.

[clancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

this one i had to do an ebook and i found it hard to follow. maybe would be better in a hard copy

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, may use later when I start foraging.

[Amy Kreydin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a fan of garden-to-glass mixology I enjoyed this book's approach to some unique cocktails. Some of the recipes I'm looking forward to trying include the nettle soda (with a splash of whiskey of course!), the persimmon margarita, chanterelle syrup, and the grapefruit-mugwort soda. Mmm!

[Mich Must Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weeds...How I hate thee. I struggle to wrench you out in great sysophean effort. Oh, look! A book about foraging cocktails. I opened this book to one of the first botanical photographs and noticed that these are the same weeds I struggle to get rid of on the side of my house every week. *Blink* *blink* Are you telling me we can eat these stupid things? Do I want to eat these green pests? Yes. Yes, I do! I shall consume my enemy!
This is a scavenger hunt and at the end you get to have a drink. Not just a drink you get at a bar. A delicious dynamic tasting masterpiece with “unbuyable flavors”. I abhore the overly sweet drinks they call cocktails available for mass intoxication. I think we are overly cautious about picking wild plants for consumption, thinking we will keel over. As Zachose says, “if your old enough to drink, your old enough to be responsible to make intelligent, educated choices about what you choose to eat.” the books Is very informative without being overly technical. Anyone can enjoy this book. Each foraged item has a picture with details about picking and then a recipe with an enticing picture of said cocktail. If nothing else, It will get you to weed your

[Kiri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital copy of this book in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

This recipe book is as interesting as it is unique. It would be awesome to go out foraging for materials to make mixed drinks. The recipes look simple enough to do once you acquire the materials and make the syrups and such. I don't think I have the skill to do this myself, but I'd love to rope in a couple of friends to help me out. I look forward to trying the sumac spritzer. (We have a lot of wild sumac where I live.)

[Lili · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have only recently started exploring the universe of craft cocktails, and I have been having a lot of fun with it. For several years, I have made my own syrups for cocktails and my own liqueurs by infusing base spirits with fruits and spices. Bitters fascinate me, even though I have never made any at home. I have never been foraging, but I do spend a lot of time hiking in the woods. So I thought that this book would be a perfect introduction to a new hobby that complements my love of cooking.

When I requested this book, I envisioned it as a cross between a foraging guide and a cocktail recipe book; ideally, with photographs or drawings of the plants next to the recipes using the ingredients. That isn’t entirely the case. The Introduction makes it clear that this book is not a book about foraging; it references the recommended reading list at the back of the book to learn more about edible plants in different geographic areas, as well as plant identification field guides. It also reinforces the responsibility to be safe about eating foraged items by making intelligent and educated choices, and recommends taking classes, joining online wild foods groups, and reading voraciously about foraging.

After the Introduction, the book is divided into six chapters: “Anatomy of a Foraged Cocktail,” garnishes, foraged syrups, wild liqueurs, backyard bitters, and base spirits. A cocktail is “drink composed of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters.” The easiest way to begin incorporating foraged ingredients into cocktails is by replacing traditional ingredients like sour juices and sweetened syrups with foraged ingredients. The book begins with recipes for verjuice made from unripe wild grapes, silverberry juice, sumac soda and nettle cordial soda, all of which make for simple substitutions in basic cocktails. Later drink recipes feature entirely unique flavor combinations. The first chapter of the book also includes information about necessary equipment for foraging ingredients, working in the kitchen with foraged ingredients, and mixing cocktails with foraged ingredients. The list and discussion of kitchen equipment is very similar to what I’ve seen in preserving and canning books, while the list and discussion of bartending equipment is very similar to what I’ve seen in other recent cocktail books. The two glassware pages are excellent, as they show the glassware (rather than just describe their shapes) as well as explain the specific uses of each glassware shape.

The ingredients for each drink recipe are printed on a full color photograph of the styled drink. The facing page has several paragraphs about the recipe and its ingredients. The recipe steps follow the informational paragraphs in red text. Sometimes the recipe is followed by notes on the featured foraged ingredient and a picture of the ingredient. These notes can include a forager’s tip about harvesting the ingredient. So to a limited extent, the book was what I expected it to be.

The garnish chapter includes pickles, juices, purees, fruit leathers, and cocktail rims. The syrups chapter includes flower syrups, which includes the neat trick of covering the flowers in sugar in a closed container to let it absorb the flavor and scent of the flowers more deeply than quickly infusing the flowers in liquid. Leaf syrups, fruit syrups, nut syrups, stem and twig syrups, root syrups and two unusual syrups are also discussed. The chapter on wild liqueurs includes macerations and infusions, such as flowering quince liqueur, classic limoncello, and lavender-infused gin; fermentations, such as elderflower champagne and brambleberry liqueur; and distillations, such as rose water. Backyard bitters is written on the premise that bitters work the same magic in a cocktail as salt works in a savory dish. A basic formula for bitters and a basic method of making bitters are presented at the outset of the chapter; this is followed by recipes for specific bitters, such as licorice fern bitters and sumac bitters, and a table of “bitters combinations.” The chapter concludes with a section on foraged bitters components that describes various plants and the parts that are usable in bitters. Finally, the chapter on base spirits describes the different types of base spirits – alphabetically from bourbon to vodka – that are used in foraged mixology. These descriptions essentially align with what I have read in other recent cocktail books.

The full color photography is predominantly a combination of stylized food photography of the finished drinks and styled photographs of the foraged ingredients. The photography of the drinks is useful because it illustrates the final look of the drink, especially with respect to color and transparency. The photography of the foraged ingredients is useful because it aids in identification of the plants.

Overall, the book was both well written and very interesting. The creativity of the cocktails and cocktail ingredients was fascinating. The information offered on foraging for ingredients seemed to be very useful; however, it also seemed like the majority of the plants required in the recipes were not native to New England, the area of the United States that I live in. I most likely will not add this book to my culinary library because of its niche appeal and because I will most likely not be able to find the ingredients required for the recipes. Off hand, I cannot think of any of my friends who live in the areas where the plants are more common who have the interest in or the time available for foraging ingredients specifically to make wildcrafted cocktails. But I am better off for having read the book as it opened a new world to me, one that I may pursue a little more if I have the time.

I have yet to prepare any of the recipes from this cookbook because of the limited availability of the required foraged ingredients in New England during the winter. If I do prepare any of the recipes, I will update this review.