The Art Of Wilderness Cooking Highlights Ingredients From Oregon's Public Lands

Kayla Sulak grew up cooking, but it wasn't until she started spending more time outdoors that she became a chef of the forest.

To save money on gas and outdoor adventures and eat better, he scoured public spaces in Oregon for ingredients like wild mushrooms, fish, and venison, which he cooked on a camp stove or over a campfire and shared online. social.

Living out of a truck and living in Sisters, Sulak specializes in one-pot meals that can include everything from morels to rabbit, grasshoppers, perch, trout and pretzels. Share her camp kitchen recipes and creations on YouTube and Instagram @her.campkitchen.

"When we collect, clean and cook something from nature, I have a strong need to remember our fish, our game or whatever we hunted," he says.

Sulak joins the latest edition of the Explore Oregon podcast to discuss all things culinary outside of Oregon. With his friend Mason Krupka, an experienced hunter and fisherman, they talked about how they hunted, fished, and collected mushrooms. They then talked about the tastiest preparation methods and their favorite recipes.

Here are some highlights from the conversation, along with some of the sulak recipes discussed. For more conversations on mushroom picking, fishing, and more recipes, listen to the full podcast at StatesmanJournal.com/explore.

Jack Harness. I've seen you cook on campfires and camp stoves. Do you have a favorite heat source for cooking?

Kayla Sulak. A camp stove is really simple, to cook on a campfire you need to heat coal; I don't cook on an open fire. So there's a whole campfire hack and it's fun and you save gas, but for simplicity I'd go with a camp stove.

Do you have a favorite combination of spices and simple oils that you like to keep on hand?

Sulak: The things we use the most are quite simple, like salt, pepper and garlic. We use a lot of paprika. Smoked paprika seems to come a bit after white wine. Mushroom oil is good, so we usually use it, but I like to use trout and pork. So we use a lot of pork, a lot of fat, and then I always have a vegetable oil base, so we have something neutral to fry.

urine I know you make a lot of Pacific Golden Chanterelle recipes, what is your favorite so far?

Sulak: By far my favorite recipe, and one we make a lot with chanterelles, is called Hungarian Mushroom Soup. It's basically like a cream of mushroom soup, but with a bit of lemon, red pepper, white wine, and cream. And it really brings out the flavor of the chanterelle. I don't like strong chanterelles because they have a subtle flavor and if you dip them in strong spices or a very rich sauce, you won't taste them. This recipe has a lot of flavor and can still be savored. There are many recipes for this, but I like one from themodernproper.com.

Urnes How small are your chanterelles when you cut them? Do you have large strips of mushrooms? You have them quite short. How do you think about it?

Fit - depends. For something like soup, it would probably be shorter, like this Hungarian Mushroom Soup, I think some people even like to take an immersion blender or food processor and puree into a creamy soup. But there is no such thing in our forest. Therefore, if I want it to be creamy without falling apart, I chop it finely. If you just sautéed the mushrooms and put them on top of the steak, you could grow a fat schnitzel.

Urnes but what about cooked trout? You have a certain reputation. Have you found ways to make it tasty and interesting?

the tube Yes. We have cooked so much trout, now we are a little tired of it. We do a few things and one of them is smoking in the woods. We like a little stone fireplace and we like hardwood chips or pellets or something like that and we like to smoke it with brown brine because it's almost like sugared trout after smoked. But I would say my favorite recipe so far is the fish curry. I love curries and Asian recipes, so fish curry is the way to go for trout in addition to smoked fish.

urnes When you say fish curry, is it easy to google and find some good ones? Do you have a favorite type of curry or one that makes it particularly good?

Sulak: I have a favorite recipe. It's at IndianHealthyRecipes.com. There is a recipe for fish curry with a little coconut milk. It's a red curry, lots of spices and oil and everything. It adds a wow factor to the trout as we get a little tired of eating it.

urnes Now for us everyday people, people like me who buy packets and fish: what do you think is the easiest, most user-friendly, easy way to make them at least reasonably good? Do you have a really easy technique that you like best?

Sulak: I would say if you just fry it in oil and then make a little pan sauce where you fry it with a little bit of oil, lemon, white wine and salt and mix it all together in a pan. It's very simple and almost as gourmet as you want it to be, especially when you're backpacking.

urine What are the rules of rabbit hunting and how do you usually do it?

Note: Rabbits are not regulated in Oregon. No season or catch limit (hunting license required). It's a lot of walking. I mostly use 12 gauge, sometimes 22 and yes for rabbits because we don't have a dog it makes it a bit more difficult you just have to keep up the miles and they are very fast. So when you see them, you might only have a second to shoot them or something, so you're out of luck there. But when you're lucky, it becomes a really fun way to hunt. If we really want to get a rabbit, we usually walk 7-10 miles. Yes it is much.

urnes So when I buy rabbits, I don't think they have much meat, but am I wrong?

Sulak: Actually, they have quite a bit of meat. For example, we haven't measured how much meat the average rabbit has, but I'd say it averages at least three-quarters of a pound on the bone or something like that. They have a lot of meat on them.

Urness: What is your favorite recipe?

Sulak: My favorite recipe we've tried so far is from the famous French chef Jacques Pepin. She has a recipe for baked rabbit with morels and pearl onions. The leg is cooked in a broth with fruit and onion, but then the back strip is cooked on the side today with herbs, provence and whatnot. Therefore, the back belt is cooked separately from the legs. It's quite a complicated recipe, so I'm sure some people will look at it and say, "That's too hard in the woods." But this is a delicious, delicious recipe.

What makes your rabbit meat different? How would you describe the rabbit, how does it taste?

Sulak: It's not a cliché, but I think it tastes like chicken. It is very light with a wild flavor. It tastes a little better than chicken. We brine almost all of our venison and rabbit meat before cooking it in the brine solution. Helps eliminate bad taste.

Mason Krupka. And he's talking about this cotton tail. A rabbit is very similar to a deer.

urine How does it compare to supermarket venison? Do you have a more distinctive taste?

Suitability: One interesting thing is that all types of venison are slightly different. You can buy quail in one place and then you can buy quail in another place and it tastes different depending on what you eat, where you live. And then each bird has its own style, whether it is light or dark meat and its flavor. It's more diverse than what you see in the grocery store.

Zach Urnes has been an outdoor reporter and host of the Explore Oregon podcast in Oregon for 15 years. Subscribe to the Statesman Journal to support their work. Urnes is the author of Best Hiking with Kids. Oregon" and "Hiking Southern Oregon." He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or 503-399-6801. Find him on Twitter @ZachsORoutdoors.

This article originally appeared in the Salem Statesman Journal. Wild Cooking with Ingredients Sourced from Oregon Public Lands