Edibles: Thistle Abundant Food Source

Description

Thistle is abundant throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and many other parts of the world, in many varieties. It can be lifesaving for a person lost in the woods. Learn to harvest and use this wonderful plant.

Tags: Thistle,root,cook,survival,training,simplify,perry,peacock,indentify,edible

Video Transcription

wilderness and innovation real survival kids survival shelters simplifying survival and wilderness innovation calm hey Perry peacock with wilderness innovation and I'm up here in the Snake River in Idaho let's go put out some things on some islands in the middle of the in the middle of the snake here in the middle of the channel and I've seen what plants and wildlife there are you had one thing about this all is thistles found all over the world it's a quite a prevalent plan and number of varieties so chances are where you're at you may well have some thistle that you could eat on to keep yourself alive okay now here's some second-year plants you can see they're starting to to get a stock on one right here this is a first-year plants here and the bigger root stock is going to usually come on one that's got a bigger set of leaves so you know try to find something that's a foot or so across all right so to dig up these things I like to just push my push a stick down to the side of them and this is a lot easier if you find these things in a kind of a sandy soil like I'm in right here if you're in rocky soil it can be kind of rough but I like to just kind of get around on all sides of it and peel the leaves back little so I can grab underneath the thorny leaves to the top of the taproot and then just pull lightly and there we go there's a nice about 810 inch long root alright here's just a few minutes here I got a little treasure trove of roots here this island has got these things scattered all over it so now let's go ahead and get preparation on these done here all right let's get down here and prep these things here's what I like to do just take and cut this thing off cut the tops off there I just try and rinse all the dirt off if I can and to be honest with you the smell and the texture and everything kind of remotely reminds me of parsnips so let's go ahead and proceed here kind of in a similar fashion you know how a carrot has a little Center part to the root right here now you see I just peeled a little bit out of here and I've left this little channel right here got the outer part of the root and then we've got this core part right here that part right there is the best part of the root it's a lot more tender not as woody and has a decent flavor to it and that right there we can actually actually just peel it right out of there just like that so you just do that and pick it out of there and you can just eat that up need it raw or you can cook it up in a in a stew or soup or whatever you could also you could also do some frying slice them and fry them kind of like a parsnip but I can take my put the outer skin against my teeth and just pull like that so I just kind of scraped off some of that outer part and that's pretty edible it's not woody let that inner part is you can't hardly chew that that's really tough stuff so basically a good good bit of the

this'll route is that I got a little bit dental floss in there but anyway so the inner part of that is edible as well as the good part of the outer part yeah we've got us a nice rolling boil on our little dakota fire here and it's been it's been boiling for probably about five minutes now or so so I get a minute or so I'll check one of the pieces of the taproot off that this will plant and see if we're tenderized enough yet there again I've had this stuffed in some places where you find it where it's like right around here it's pretty dry some places where you find it it's actually very very very nice very tender and so if you can find thistles that are kind of back under the trees a little bit or in areas that the grounds not like parched dry sometimes you can find some a little better now I'm doing now is I'm just peeling off that I could have peeled it off before I cooked it but I'm just peeling off that outer husk there and then I just eat the inside here oh now that piece there is good now that's nice that is I was really nice that's a good that's a good flavored piece I gathered these from a few different places around here and I know one one plant was kind of underneath the kind of in some oyster ground and that tastes pretty good tastes a little better if I add a little salt

you can't even go in this root part the outside so I peeled out for there you can't even depending on again where you got it from everything this one's kind of tender here it's not too bad and not too bad a flavor so if you got thistle you're in pretty good shape there you go thistle root pretty tasty you know not bad

I'll give you some bulk some DEET and you find them about everywhere which that's a good thing here's something else you can do with these thistles also is these are related in some way to the two artichokes and in the same similar family or whatever and you can actually what I do is just take this thing off and throw some of these in the fire and let the coals kind of burn the little prickly things off of them and you just peel them back and peel out that the seed head in the middle and the very bottom it's not very big it's probably the size of a pea you just get down in there with your teeth and just eat out that very center it's kind of like artichoke heart so there's another use for all these seed heads and the bigger ones you could find of course it you know be a little more worth your trouble but if you're out doing nothing but surviving who cares anyhow right so Perry peacock with mothers innovation