Place lily root in pot with large rock, cover with water and boil. Throw away root and eat rock. (Rock can be tenderized by marinating in Kraft Italian Salad Dressing for several eons.)
The simple fact that you are willing to do all this research at the expense of your own discomfort for others says a lot about your character Mr. Woodbeard!
I would just like to say. I did not see that tap out coming. I was betting on Fox lady not Herbalife????? Bob da builder better get his head right. Skinny guy better eat that fish soon or he will be taking it home with him. Alaska is still scaring me, she just might quit soon. Totally the wrong thread for this topic. lol
I say Meghan wins with Fowler #2. Dave is next, then Carleigh. Although they might just punt David for liability reasons. Can a show just let a guy die out there! He looks like he spent a year in a concentration camp. Poor guy.
Exactly and he has food????? You only store excess. His body has already turned on him and is eating the important parts. Fowler aka BobtheBuilder is setting pretty on his reserves. but he is going home sick fast. Dave, aka laughing dude, he is gone. They need to do a health check and pull him. I foound aand read the rules they do health checks at random. But 71 days is a long time!
Mehgan is the Mom with the fox problem right? I think if she put her game camera on her snares, she would find the fox is eating her hares. bahahahahahaha thats funny right there.
Very informative video, thanks. My wife, who is Chinese, eats lily root in China. She says you should not boil it as the boiling process causes the root to shrink and the taste to intensify. She recommends soaking it for 24 hours in water around 30-40 degrees C (86- 104 Deg F) then it is OK. It is used in China as medicine for its bitterness which is essential.
Finally! An honest survival channel. I have been searching for something like this since les stroud dropped off the map. Thank you for taking your time to do this. I have been attending different survival and woodsman camps since the early 80s, and most of my free time is spent in the woods, but like you have huge doubts about how long I could really sustain myself, much less my family.
Ugh, yeah, can you imagine bringing in more mouths to feed? Many people suggest it would be easier with a tribe or more people, but they never call these people what they really are "dependents." You not feeding yourself is one thing, but starving kids is a whole other matter. Wouldn't do it. No way.
if you dry and grind it you can turn it into a starchy flour and make a water lily cake(like pancakes but worse),or into a shake and chug it. fresh lilly roots dont taste as bad as floating ones.i grew up eating this.
At one point, Dear Beardsman, you say the rhizome smells like elder flower, which reminded me that here in the Czech Republic people used to dip elder flowers in batter and fry them like pancakes.
I agree. It would have been amazing to know what a year would like like for them and what they did in order to make a living. We've lost most of that knowledge and can only guess.
The way you prepared this Lilly reminds me of how an old lady would cook rubarb leaves during the depression. She kept boiling and steeping the poison out of them.
Hi love your experiment. Have you tried soaking the sliced/unsliced lily root in water for about 3-5 days? Changing the water everyday. This is one of the method of making the poisonous Dioscorea daemona edible. The other one is to left it in a streaming water/river for 3-5 days. Need to peel off the skin first. Maybe can help with removing the undesirable taste or smell.
Lily root is a delicacy in the northern part of Botswana. It is mixed and slow cooked with beef until tender, then you pound/mesh to make a tasty dish. The beef is usually more on the fatty side.
Man you put a ton of work into this for such a let down (although you might have expected it). I wouldn't think of eating this unless survival got real but now I know not to waste my time on it. Thank you for your work in this video!
I honestly thought the bake was going to work LOL. I was shocked when I bite into and it was totally acidic! The big chunks just didn't leach. So you'd have to cut thinly...not potato like at all :)
If you transplant them and let them grow in fresh water for about a week, you won't have to boil them as much and they lose much of their acridity (you may be able to eat them raw too). The younger and longer grown in clean water the better the results.
Interesting. Though that sounds like agriculture :) and not really a legit way to "survive", but I understand your point!! As is, they are not something that can be eaten. Maybe at some future time, I'll leave one in a stream and see if it can be leached.
Hi Wooded: Just the facts. that will save me ever screwing around with water lily. Thanks for your sharing. You have a very brave & patient family. Brian 76
You are showing two different species, the yellow pond lily (Nuphar lutea) and the white water lily (Nymphaea odorata) the one with white flowers and round leaves with a notch. Have you tried the Nymphaea as well?
For sure. But I will always cook them first. I took too many courses about parasites that they scare the crap out of me. But I'd toss them into a soup for sure.
I believe they used to do similar with acorns in the past. Grind them up and leave them in a stream to bleed the tannin out and make them palatable. So, if you're looking for survival food, try slicing thinly, shaving or grinding and leaving in some sort of netting or cloth bag in running water. Let nature do the work. I wouldn't be too surprised if this is how they were made palatable in the past.
Nice test. I had read that the water Lilly was really bitter in the AF Bourbeau book survivethon. I tasted the root before but haven't tried boiling in lots of changes of water... not very appetizing. Lol I loved seeing your families reaction to it ! :) cool video my friend.
I just found a huge lily today. I boiled it for ~20 minutes then took a potato masher to it and rinsed it off. I would say that I got 75-85% of the bitter flavour out! They’re almost Apple like now and I feel like they would go well in a baked crisp
I'm glad you have put these videos up. it really shows what you can use and what you can't. also that it is impossible to live on your own in the Forest. I always thought you could but you have shown clearly that you need community
That's an interesting point. The fact that some plant or animal matter is not poisonous and/or may have some nutrients in it doesn't actually mean that you can readily fill an empty stomach with it. Even under starvation, your body will quickly reject some new foods sources. I have a question though. Some foods aparently become better after some time if you keep on trying to eat them. In my case, beer and sushi were just awful at first, but i now find them extremely tasty. This effect has been widely observed and some terms have been coined in an attempt to explain it (such as "flavour flavour learning"). I suspect our brains may have a mechanism to change our perception of how tasty a food source is over time. Maybe the brain is reading the effect of nutrient level spikes in the blood minutes to hours after our meals and then linking these to those initially unapalatable tastes? Maybe the brain is just lessening the rejection to those foods because an initially presumed connection between those specific tastes and a possible poisoning was canceled through experimentation? Maybe the initial rejection is just a means for our body cells to have enougth time to develop a means to cancel actually poisonous substances found in different types of foods? Those are just theories anyway. Thanks for the experiment and your thoughts on it.
Some foods, I would agree with, but the water lily, is doubtfully one of them. I can't describe the flavour, because their really isn't anyway to do that. It's not a "taste," but more like pure acid, burning. There really is nothing like it. Now something like chokecherries, I could agree with you on that. Many people wouldn't like them at first, but would get used to them. Same for black walnuts, even though I like both, many people don't. I grew up around chockecherries and ate them off and on, but never in great number. But they do have a limit, because they are so sour. Maybe someone can push through that, but neither of us could. So I do agree with you in some respects, but lily is unlikely to fit in that...you might compare it to untreated acorns...extremely bitter. So if you want to save yourself the trouble on lily (as far as finding them), open up an acorn and see how many you can eat. It's very similar, but lily is 10x worse.
Did you try any small younger tubers? I was reading up on this and saw sources in other parts of the world saying the tubers get more bitter as they get larger.
For me, I found the best way to eat this was to grate it from raw into a pulp and put it in a net bag and I put it in the river to leach for 24 hrs as this was the most energy saving way, I then made them into patties with some wild garlic flowers heads and baked them on a hot stone until brown . I managed to eat 3 patties about 6 ounces with some pheasant, I suffered no ill effects but I think it was only pure hunger that I was able to suffer that amount.
Yeah, but is it food? LOL. I would say no. If it needs that much input with so little out of it, I wouldn't consider it edible. I'd spent more time collecting black walnuts and acorns before spending any more time on a water lily. It's the lotus that deserves respect! Thanks for adding that, I do think it would have merit and what you're doing is very much like how acorns are leached so I do think it would work.
Great video, first time I saw the root or tuber of the water lily, I had no idea what it was. Finally noticed the water lily pads and flowers growing out of them. Never would have thought to try and eat one as they looked entirely disgusting. Thanks for the video though. I had a great laugh and showed it to a friend who also enjoyed your family's reaction to it all. Especially when your son told his mom she had to try the baked one after you spit it out. Hahaha, kids got a good sense of humour when he likes watching their parents eat vile things. God bless and take care eh.
Damn... Thanks man. I live in a house on pilings above thousands of these.... was hoping I could eat them and enjoy them. I'll try it anyway but was wanting more of a "wow, this is amazing" reaction.
Do you know the channel "primitive technology"? The guy faced similar issues with edible but hardly palatable seeds. To process them, he cut the seeds in very slim slices - just the way you guys did. But then he left them in a woven basket in a spring for more than 24 hours to get the bitter compounds out. It had a similar effect like your cooking procedure. Perhaps that way the water lilly could become part of your survival diet.
Any 1 tried with sugar? It s the opposite of bitter. For experiment, recommended nice brown sugar. No cheap white. Apparently tribes in Papa New have water lily as part of their diet. And apparently ,some part of the plant turned in to a flour. Maybe the make some kinda bread/ cake.
Would be interesting to see if on the final boil it was boiled in saltwater or sugar water to see if it made a difference in the bitter and palatable area,
I think the confusion is that everyone keeps trying the rhizome and not the roots themselves that attach the plant to the floor and feed the rhizome. ?
Hmmmm, never thought to try. Then again, there aren't any solid records of anyone actually eating it, just bad "broken phone" hand-me downs through time. I would only revisit this if I could find a good historical record. Otherwise, I'm officially done with lily root and wouldn't waste my time. The roots could have merit though...I can't say i tried. My guess is that they'd be as bad as the rest since they are in the same soil and the soil must have something to do with it. All that red/brown coming out of the plant.
I see your No Frills seasonings, lol. Were you purposely keeping the front labels on your food items hidden from view? You should make more videos of trying to cook various wild edibles. I'm VERY interested in wild edibles but unfortunately haven't had much chance to go out and find them.
Maybe they will be offended that they couldn't improve the flavour LOL. Yeah, I have a few more cued, but a lot of work ahead of me. As they come in season I will deal with them, at least the more important of the bunch...and they really aren't all that important. Many of them have micronutrients, but to live off the land, we need to focus on the macronutrients, once that provide energy first and foremost. There are many greens, leaves, etc. but they are not going to keep a person alive...well, not by themselves.
I mentioned in another video about the video game where one pike can sustain you for a full day. Also in that game, eating a TON of mushrooms/berries/veggies will reduce your hunger, but your hunger grows much more quickly than with eating meat. Rather, they make you feel full when you eat enough, but soon you'll be feeling hunger again. I think this is something they did well in the game. Your stomach may be full of food, but by the time it finishes processing the food, what will you gain from it? How many calories are there? Almost none. Vegetables are a great source of vitamins and (sometimes) flavor, but not calories. They're more of a supplemental food. The human body needs fatty food. Anyway, where in Ontario do you live near? I know you're near Kawartha, just wondering how far off.
Great taste test Chris!! If seasoning and oil won't make it good nothing will!! Epic when your son says "Im not going to eat it" Haaha!! TFS this test in the end Lily root is off my menu! Pike will have to do!
In trying to figure out an edible recipe for water lily, one of the things that stands out is that nothing in nature eats them, even though they are clearly abundant and easy enough to collect. There must be some sort of antacid added to the cooking water to break down the high acidity of the tuber. . It might be that cooking in a large pot of water to which several packs of Alka-Seltzer has been added might work. LOL :-)
Haha, that's funny. I didn't know anything ate them, but if they did, they'd have to have some kind of natural way to make it digestible. I could see how eating a big volume of it would turn the stomach upside down.
I have been thinking about this for quiet a bit, and something occurred to me. Why not grate the root into a paste for use as a condiment similar to wasabi? It might be a good way to flavor foods in the wild.
Awesome video! Here in Florida we have “Spatterdock”. I’ve always wondered if they were edible. This gave me a good idea of what to expect! I guess these are mainly a last resort 😂
In regards to the inability to eat more pike I was wondering why you didn't make a fruity sauce with the cherries and berries to cook with the pike instead of eating them by themselves? Just curious. Cheers.
We tried to do that with chokecherries and it made it taste like bitter chokecherries LOL. It's also turned the fish texture into mush. It was really bad. Chokecherries need a sweetener and some lemon to make it really good. I'm talking about 1/2 sugar 1/2 chokecherries. I'm planning to make some fruit leather at some point to see if it cuts down on the bitterness. I was told it does work better. The fish really wasn't terrible, it was just too much fish, until you've eaten fish every meal for a week, it's hard to describe. It just was too much.
Hey If you are up for another experiment with this root one I have been meaning to test is a technique used by Australian Aboriginals to make edible a poisonous yam found there. They roast the yams whole with the skin on until fully cooked and then slice up this and place into a reed bag they make. Here I would recommend mesh. and leave in a running stream overnight to leech out the toxins If this is a viable option it would remove much of the labor
I read an account from 'Green Deen' and he said he tried this with the lily root with a hose and running water and it didn't work...for him. You might have better luck.
The big cubs were the issue. Thin slice was enough to let the toxins leach out, but as big cubs, they didn't leach near enough. The spices and oil and baking did nothing. So you'd need to fine cut and leach....too much effort!!
I liked the smile and the appearance that you were hoping your son would just grab a bite. So lily pads off the menu? lol You should try seasoning the pike with it! Shave some slices and boil then roast and grind them up and cook you pike with this as a seasoning. Or just grill it with butter and salt pepper and a sprinkling of honey, which ever. lol
The stems - the skinny parts that attach to the leaves. *a lot of tubers and plants are poisonous until boiled...potato, taro, tomato plant, apple seed, etc. 🍄 🍄 🍄
Well, it wouldn't surprise me if it was wrong. Native Americans often applies the same name to multiple edible plants, & even had general category terms for certain types of food, the way we have fruit, vegetable, grain, etc. For instance, a lot of tribes in the east called all edible roots "to" or "ato." It's not like white people were trying every single one, or learning to gather it for themselves. They farmed virtually all of their food.
You shouldn't allow your child to experiment with eating foraged foods until you know for certain it is edible. If there are toxins in the plant, it will affect your child more than it would you because he's smaller.
Thank you for exposing "fake news" in the wild edibles world. Maybe you could start a new playlist debunking other edibles, tips, tools, etc. Throw the gauntlet down and challenge others to bring further evidence to prove you wrong. Now that would be some reality "TV" to watch 😮😆
these are eaten quite frequently as a tea or cooked with sweet honey in eastern asia. maybe the specimen may differ from here and at northern america tho
I had to give your family a thumbs up! They are the real taste testers. Mine won't eat MREs. Tell your wife thanks for sacrificing the smell of her house. Great job! You need to get them all fake beards to wear in your video... lol
I freaking heard of a way to process this at one rare.moment of reading online. I can not for the life of me remember what it was but for some reason I have a feeling it was something like soak in lye water for 24, leach in moving water for 24 and then cook. I have to find that now cause I wanted to try it.
I'm not sure they showed how he really hunting. If I was on the show, do you think I would risk botching my hunt just to catch the kill on film? LOL. Ha, I'd hack this shit out of that show. I probably wouldn't film much of what I did, cause I'd be there to win. In other words, who knows how he really hunted or how much. I think Dave is smart enough to have hunted almost the entire time, it just didn't work out for him. I'd like to interview Dave. I think he stands out among all of them, primarily because he pushed his limits.
lol yeah me neither. I know in my current state I wouldn't make it on the show. I weighed myself and I am down to 114 pounds. Back when I was healthy and in my prime I may have done well but it doesn't appeal to me being alone that long. I would like a woodsman show or a real pioneer style living of the land show. That would be fun.
I agree. I'd like to see pairs at least and more equipment so we can see actual skill play out. We already know how ever single show concludes. Everyone starves and is lonely! Now let's see people actually acquire some food and put those foraging skills and hunting and fishing skills against the others.
Dragon turnips (Jack-in-the-pulpit) are easier made edible. Maybe slicing it potato chip thin, and drying it for six months, might make it edible. I've done Dragon turnips this way. PAPER thin, dry for six months. They still had a little sting to them, and I personally couldn't eat a bunch of it, but it STILL tasted better than Lily Root. I'd rather have a gun put to my head, and be forced to swallow a bowling ball, than to try water lily again... Ewwww!! (ShUdDeR)
I would not eat Jack in the pulpits because their pretty uncommon and a large corm is at least 25 years old. Also if you eat their corm (which is their brain) they aren’t coming back.
Nope. It wouldn't work unless I thinly sliced and leached, but if it needs 4 boils, is it worth it? Over a stove is one thing, but over a fire? Energy in =/= energy out!
From what I have gathered after a bit of research is that the root is not really edible as you guys so perfectly demonstrated. One source I found indicates that the best time to eat the root is before the plant flowers. It will still be horrible, but less horrible. As far as the rest of the plant, here is a great link for a video talking about the actually edible parts of the lily plants, when to gather the parts and even how to cook the seeds. th-cam.com/video/GRNfmWUp7Fo/w-d-xo.html. Awesome video guys, you go above and beyond!
Lmao good but funny video, and I tried arrowhead roots once I found the same thing I couldn't get that taste out no matter how many times I boiled them.
Place lily root in pot with large rock, cover with water and boil. Throw away root and eat rock. (Rock can be tenderized by marinating in Kraft Italian Salad Dressing for several eons.)
Haha, why not pulverize the rock and garnish with wintergreen :) Little gritty, but helps with digestion and a wonderful abrasive for cleaning teeth.
Great vid. I had the same response as Stroud. This is similar to books saying you can eat Jack in the pulpit roots.
The simple fact that you are willing to do all this research at the expense of your own discomfort for others says a lot about your character Mr. Woodbeard!
I have more in mind too. Just need to put the big defrost on all the wild edibles. Let's see how far we can take this!
I would just like to say. I did not see that tap out coming. I was betting on Fox lady not Herbalife?????
Bob da builder better get his head right. Skinny guy better eat that fish soon or he will be taking it home with him. Alaska is still scaring me, she just might quit soon.
Totally the wrong thread for this topic. lol
I say Meghan wins with Fowler #2. Dave is next, then Carleigh. Although they might just punt David for liability reasons. Can a show just let a guy die out there! He looks like he spent a year in a concentration camp. Poor guy.
Exactly and he has food????? You only store excess. His body has already turned on him and is eating the important parts. Fowler aka BobtheBuilder is setting pretty on his reserves. but he is going home sick fast. Dave, aka laughing dude, he is gone. They need to do a health check and pull him. I foound aand read the rules they do health checks at random. But 71 days is a long time!
Mehgan is the Mom with the fox problem right? I think if she put her game camera on her snares, she would find the fox is eating her hares. bahahahahahaha thats funny right there.
Very informative video, thanks. My wife, who is Chinese, eats lily root in China. She says you should not boil it as the boiling process causes the root to shrink and the taste to intensify. She recommends soaking it for 24 hours in water around 30-40 degrees C (86- 104 Deg F) then it is OK. It is used in China as medicine for its bitterness which is essential.
Finally! An honest survival channel. I have been searching for something like this since les stroud dropped off the map. Thank you for taking your time to do this. I have been attending different survival and woodsman camps since the early 80s, and most of my free time is spent in the woods, but like you have huge doubts about how long I could really sustain myself, much less my family.
Ugh, yeah, can you imagine bringing in more mouths to feed? Many people suggest it would be easier with a tribe or more people, but they never call these people what they really are "dependents." You not feeding yourself is one thing, but starving kids is a whole other matter. Wouldn't do it. No way.
if you dry and grind it you can turn it into a starchy flour and make a water lily cake(like pancakes but worse),or into a shake and chug it. fresh lilly roots dont taste as bad as floating ones.i grew up eating this.
I like that you back things up by doing them and not repeating what you just heard!Very well done!!
Thanks parkerbrothers, more to come! Let's put this stuff to the test :)
At one point, Dear Beardsman, you say the rhizome smells like elder flower, which reminded me that here in the Czech Republic people used to dip elder flowers in batter and fry them like pancakes.
Good stuff, thanks for putting in the proper research.
Thanks Tom! Love your channel and survival videos!!
it's really scarey to think how much old knowledge has been lost.
I agree. It would have been amazing to know what a year would like like for them and what they did in order to make a living. We've lost most of that knowledge and can only guess.
Scary too how much falsehood is bantered about. Some myths stretch back to at least the 1700s. People have been lying for a long, long time.
No mystery GS. Completely different digestive tracts.
I love how skeptical your family looks at the start!
Hahaha.
The way you prepared this Lilly reminds me of how an old lady would cook rubarb leaves during the depression. She kept boiling and steeping the poison out of them.
Makes sense when you think about it. Lots of energy inputs though, if you're doing it over a fire...but if you've got nothing else.
Interesting experimentation. Thanks for sharing your findings.
Thanks Lonnie! Big honour to have you lend me your eyes and ears!
Hi love your experiment. Have you tried soaking the sliced/unsliced lily root in water for about 3-5 days? Changing the water everyday. This is one of the method of making the poisonous Dioscorea daemona edible. The other one is to left it in a streaming water/river for 3-5 days. Need to peel off the skin first. Maybe can help with removing the undesirable taste or smell.
I know someone else tried running water over it, but turned out just as bad.
Lily root is a delicacy in the northern part of Botswana. It is mixed and slow cooked with beef until tender, then you pound/mesh to make a tasty dish. The beef is usually more on the fatty side.
My grandfather we are Native American and he said they ate them and it would taste like potatoes it could be different on each lake
Man you put a ton of work into this for such a let down (although you might have expected it). I wouldn't think of eating this unless survival got real but now I know not to waste my time on it. Thank you for your work in this video!
I honestly thought the bake was going to work LOL. I was shocked when I bite into and it was totally acidic! The big chunks just didn't leach. So you'd have to cut thinly...not potato like at all :)
If you transplant them and let them grow in fresh water for about a week, you won't have to boil them as much and they lose much of their acridity (you may be able to eat them raw too). The younger and longer grown in clean water the better the results.
Interesting. Though that sounds like agriculture :) and not really a legit way to "survive", but I understand your point!! As is, they are not something that can be eaten. Maybe at some future time, I'll leave one in a stream and see if it can be leached.
Hi Wooded: Just the facts. that will save me ever screwing around with water lily. Thanks for your sharing. You have a very brave & patient family. Brian 76
Thanks Brian. If you get the chance, as a reference, you could try, but it's not worth the effort to dig it up!
You are showing two different species, the yellow pond lily (Nuphar lutea) and the white water lily (Nymphaea odorata) the one with white flowers and round leaves with a notch. Have you tried the Nymphaea as well?
I would be very suspicious of a floating tuber as well.
Cool to see your family getting onboard with your experiment. Great video, and very informative. Water lily is out!
What's your takes on eating bugs? I've eaten things such as termites, ants, scorpion, grasshopper/crickets. Would you be willing to eat grub?
For sure. But I will always cook them first. I took too many courses about parasites that they scare the crap out of me. But I'd toss them into a soup for sure.
I'd say try grating it and soak it in salt water over 2 nights while changing the water between then boil it and change the water twice.
Might work.
I'll give it a try
I believe they used to do similar with acorns in the past. Grind them up and leave them in a stream to bleed the tannin out and make them palatable. So, if you're looking for survival food, try slicing thinly, shaving or grinding and leaving in some sort of netting or cloth bag in running water. Let nature do the work. I wouldn't be too surprised if this is how they were made palatable in the past.
Nice test. I had read that the water Lilly was really bitter in the AF Bourbeau book survivethon. I tasted the root before but haven't tried boiling in lots of changes of water... not very appetizing. Lol I loved seeing your families reaction to it ! :) cool video my friend.
Survivathon was a great book! Very well written and real.
This waterlily is native meal to Maun in Botswana 🇧🇼. It is cooked with meat for many hours and it does taste good at the end....
I just found a huge lily today. I boiled it for ~20 minutes then took a potato masher to it and rinsed it off. I would say that I got 75-85% of the bitter flavour out! They’re almost Apple like now and I feel like they would go well in a baked crisp
The edibility question has been answered without any doubt!
Thanks!
Yeah, don't rely on it, or waste your time. But if you're curious, you've been warned!
I'm glad you have put these videos up. it really shows what you can use and what you can't. also that it is impossible to live on your own in the Forest. I always thought you could but you have shown clearly that you need community
And a whole lot of tools and nonrestrictive laws! It's a tall order indeed.
That's an interesting point. The fact that some plant or animal matter is not poisonous and/or may have some nutrients in it doesn't actually mean that you can readily fill an empty stomach with it. Even under starvation, your body will quickly reject some new foods sources. I have a question though. Some foods aparently become better after some time if you keep on trying to eat them. In my case, beer and sushi were just awful at first, but i now find them extremely tasty. This effect has been widely observed and some terms have been coined in an attempt to explain it (such as "flavour flavour learning"). I suspect our brains may have a mechanism to change our perception of how tasty a food source is over time. Maybe the brain is reading the effect of nutrient level spikes in the blood minutes to hours after our meals and then linking these to those initially unapalatable tastes? Maybe the brain is just lessening the rejection to those foods because an initially presumed connection between those specific tastes and a possible poisoning was canceled through experimentation? Maybe the initial rejection is just a means for our body cells to have enougth time to develop a means to cancel actually poisonous substances found in different types of foods? Those are just theories anyway. Thanks for the experiment and your thoughts on it.
Some foods, I would agree with, but the water lily, is doubtfully one of them. I can't describe the flavour, because their really isn't anyway to do that. It's not a "taste," but more like pure acid, burning. There really is nothing like it. Now something like chokecherries, I could agree with you on that. Many people wouldn't like them at first, but would get used to them. Same for black walnuts, even though I like both, many people don't. I grew up around chockecherries and ate them off and on, but never in great number. But they do have a limit, because they are so sour. Maybe someone can push through that, but neither of us could. So I do agree with you in some respects, but lily is unlikely to fit in that...you might compare it to untreated acorns...extremely bitter. So if you want to save yourself the trouble on lily (as far as finding them), open up an acorn and see how many you can eat. It's very similar, but lily is 10x worse.
Did you try any small younger tubers? I was reading up on this and saw sources in other parts of the world saying the tubers get more bitter as they get larger.
For me, I found the best way to eat this was to grate it from raw into a pulp and put it in a net bag and I put it in the river to leach for 24 hrs as this was the most energy saving way, I then made them into patties with some wild garlic flowers heads and baked them on a hot stone until brown . I managed to eat 3 patties about 6 ounces with some pheasant, I suffered no ill effects but I think it was only pure hunger that I was able to suffer that amount.
Yeah, but is it food? LOL. I would say no. If it needs that much input with so little out of it, I wouldn't consider it edible. I'd spent more time collecting black walnuts and acorns before spending any more time on a water lily. It's the lotus that deserves respect! Thanks for adding that, I do think it would have merit and what you're doing is very much like how acorns are leached so I do think it would work.
The Wooded Beardsman of all the things that didn’t happen. This one didn’t happen the most. He totally watched the Ray Mears acorn video.
Great video, first time I saw the root or tuber of the water lily, I had no idea what it was. Finally noticed the water lily pads and flowers growing out of them. Never would have thought to try and eat one as they looked entirely disgusting.
Thanks for the video though. I had a great laugh and showed it to a friend who also enjoyed your family's reaction to it all. Especially when your son told his mom she had to try the baked one after you spit it out. Hahaha, kids got a good sense of humour when he likes watching their parents eat vile things.
God bless and take care eh.
Probably try leaching it also in several changes of water to remove the acrid compounds prior to cooking as well might help.
This is my favorite channel. Thanks for taking the time to test this. I would watch another challenge before that ALONE crap. Ontario Rocks!
Ontario does rock!
Damn... Thanks man. I live in a house on pilings above thousands of these.... was hoping I could eat them and enjoy them. I'll try it anyway but was wanting more of a "wow, this is amazing" reaction.
Do you know the channel "primitive technology"? The guy faced similar issues with edible but hardly palatable seeds. To process them, he cut the seeds in very slim slices - just the way you guys did. But then he left them in a woven basket in a spring for more than 24 hours to get the bitter compounds out. It had a similar effect like your cooking procedure. Perhaps that way the water lilly could become part of your survival diet.
Green Deen (in the description) tried something similar, but didn't have the greatest results.
Thank you for putting in the legwork and sharing your results with us.
You're welcome John.
Any 1 tried with sugar? It s the opposite of bitter. For experiment, recommended nice brown sugar. No cheap white.
Apparently tribes in Papa New have water lily as part of their diet. And apparently ,some part of the plant turned in to a flour.
Maybe the make some kinda bread/ cake.
Would be interesting to see if on the final boil it was boiled in saltwater or sugar water to see if it made a difference in the bitter and palatable area,
So have you made any plans for the next season of wilderness living challenge?
Working on it now, got some ideas in mind!
Just a thought but yes I wouldn't waste time on it.
I have a couple ponds down here and if I try it I'll let you know how it turns out.
Looking forward to your results! Maybe you'll find one that isn't so bad. Let me know!
Is it possible that you collected Nuphar lutea (yellow water Lilly) instead of Nymphaea odorata (white water Lilly)
I think the confusion is that everyone keeps trying the rhizome and not the roots themselves that attach the plant to the floor and feed the rhizome. ?
Hmmmm, never thought to try. Then again, there aren't any solid records of anyone actually eating it, just bad "broken phone" hand-me downs through time. I would only revisit this if I could find a good historical record. Otherwise, I'm officially done with lily root and wouldn't waste my time. The roots could have merit though...I can't say i tried. My guess is that they'd be as bad as the rest since they are in the same soil and the soil must have something to do with it. All that red/brown coming out of the plant.
I see your No Frills seasonings, lol. Were you purposely keeping the front labels on your food items hidden from view? You should make more videos of trying to cook various wild edibles. I'm VERY interested in wild edibles but unfortunately haven't had much chance to go out and find them.
Maybe they will be offended that they couldn't improve the flavour LOL. Yeah, I have a few more cued, but a lot of work ahead of me. As they come in season I will deal with them, at least the more important of the bunch...and they really aren't all that important. Many of them have micronutrients, but to live off the land, we need to focus on the macronutrients, once that provide energy first and foremost. There are many greens, leaves, etc. but they are not going to keep a person alive...well, not by themselves.
I mentioned in another video about the video game where one pike can sustain you for a full day. Also in that game, eating a TON of mushrooms/berries/veggies will reduce your hunger, but your hunger grows much more quickly than with eating meat. Rather, they make you feel full when you eat enough, but soon you'll be feeling hunger again. I think this is something they did well in the game. Your stomach may be full of food, but by the time it finishes processing the food, what will you gain from it? How many calories are there? Almost none. Vegetables are a great source of vitamins and (sometimes) flavor, but not calories. They're more of a supplemental food. The human body needs fatty food.
Anyway, where in Ontario do you live near? I know you're near Kawartha, just wondering how far off.
But there are many different species of water lilies. What is some are better suited for human consumption than others?
Great taste test Chris!! If seasoning and oil won't make it good nothing will!! Epic when your son says "Im not going to eat it"
Haaha!! TFS this test in the end Lily root is off my menu! Pike will have to do!
Little Pike wont eat it, big Pike won't and neither will Momma Pike LOL.
Haahaaa!! The Pike Family!!
In trying to figure out an edible recipe for water lily, one of the things that stands out is that nothing in nature eats them, even though they are clearly abundant and easy enough to collect. There must be some sort of antacid added to the cooking water to break down the high acidity of the tuber. . It might be that cooking in a large pot of water to which several packs of Alka-Seltzer has been added might work. LOL :-)
Haha, that's funny. I didn't know anything ate them, but if they did, they'd have to have some kind of natural way to make it digestible. I could see how eating a big volume of it would turn the stomach upside down.
my brother , if anybody knows , it's you and Jeremy :-)
I have been thinking about this for quiet a bit, and something occurred to me. Why not grate the root into a paste for use as a condiment similar to wasabi? It might be a good way to flavor foods in the wild.
check out the Indian Village. They peel the stem, break into segments, boil it with spices..... Its gross if you don't know how to do it.
Can you regrow it if I found one on shore?
Awesome video! Here in Florida we have “Spatterdock”. I’ve always wondered if they were edible. This gave me a good idea of what to expect! I guess these are mainly a last resort 😂
Could you just extract the starches somehow?
You should have tried to slurp back some starch water from boil #2. Could be useful to augment a stew. :-)
You first :)
I'm not as adventurous as you..But it could be rendered down and "neutralised"..I guess we'll never know.
not sure why the same comment appeared twice, I was saying ray mears tried fermenting the seeds and it did not work either
Cute family test. Educational as well. Thanks!
Thanks Jude!
In regards to the inability to eat more pike I was wondering why you didn't make a fruity sauce with the cherries and berries to cook with the pike instead of eating them by themselves? Just curious. Cheers.
We tried to do that with chokecherries and it made it taste like bitter chokecherries LOL. It's also turned the fish texture into mush. It was really bad. Chokecherries need a sweetener and some lemon to make it really good. I'm talking about 1/2 sugar 1/2 chokecherries. I'm planning to make some fruit leather at some point to see if it cuts down on the bitterness. I was told it does work better. The fish really wasn't terrible, it was just too much fish, until you've eaten fish every meal for a week, it's hard to describe. It just was too much.
Hey
If you are up for another experiment with this root one I have been meaning to test is a technique used by Australian Aboriginals to make edible a poisonous yam found there. They roast the yams whole with the skin on until fully cooked and then slice up this and place into a reed bag they make. Here I would recommend mesh. and leave in a running stream overnight to leech out the toxins
If this is a viable option it would remove much of the labor
I read an account from 'Green Deen' and he said he tried this with the lily root with a hose and running water and it didn't work...for him. You might have better luck.
The Wooded Beardsman hmmm, there's got to be a way lol. I'm reluctant to give up on it. That could be an easy staple if we can get it palatable
Try cooking it for 8 hours.. Over a fire. Something natives did was boiled food for many hours in a stew.
Excellent video. I have never been able to handle it.
I wonder if you could do it up like a mash like a distiller mash and then drain it through a cheesecloth then serve it up like mashed potatoes?
Interesting, you would think all that boiling and then baking would make it palatable, but it seemed even worse when you tried it.
The big cubs were the issue. Thin slice was enough to let the toxins leach out, but as big cubs, they didn't leach near enough. The spices and oil and baking did nothing. So you'd need to fine cut and leach....too much effort!!
You might try pickling this root, who knows, maybe that would work..??
What if you boiled it for a few hours? Will that make a difference?
I doubt it. Just too acrid. It might be something about the acid in the soil just being too overwhelming.
I was wonder if you can reach to regard this root I would love purchase some for you
Wow brave move getting the family to be test it 😂😂. Great video, Great subject 👍
They were great sports about it :)
well it contains some starch but you need to boil out all the poison
I liked the smile and the appearance that you were hoping your son would just grab a bite. So lily pads off the menu? lol
You should try seasoning the pike with it! Shave some slices and boil then roast and grind them up and cook you pike with this as a seasoning. Or just grill it with butter and salt pepper and a sprinkling of honey, which ever. lol
Nice pic Wes! I'll take option B please!!!!
Have you tried stir-frying the stem with garlic and salt? It's delicious! 🍕🍎
The stem or the actual tuber?
The stems - the skinny parts that attach to the leaves.
*a lot of tubers and plants are poisonous until boiled...potato, taro, tomato plant, apple seed, etc. 🍄 🍄 🍄
Makes sense!
Well, it wouldn't surprise me if it was wrong. Native Americans often applies the same name to multiple edible plants, & even had general category terms for certain types of food, the way we have fruit, vegetable, grain, etc. For instance, a lot of tribes in the east called all edible roots "to" or "ato." It's not like white people were trying every single one, or learning to gather it for themselves. They farmed virtually all of their food.
looks good! those lillies look great for frog fishing too
Yeah, the bullfrogs sing in the spring!
Good job on your videos.
Thanks!
ray mears has a video fermenting the flower seeds to try making them palatable, it did not work.
Interesting, I'm not surprised!
You shouldn't allow your child to experiment with eating foraged foods until you know for certain it is edible. If there are toxins in the plant, it will affect your child more than it would you because he's smaller.
Thank you for exposing "fake news" in the wild edibles world. Maybe you could start a new playlist debunking other edibles, tips, tools, etc. Throw the gauntlet down and challenge others to bring further evidence to prove you wrong. Now that would be some reality "TV" to watch 😮😆
I have a few more on the list and intend to tackle them as they come into season!
these are eaten quite frequently as a tea or cooked with sweet honey in eastern asia. maybe the specimen may differ from here and at northern america tho
I wonder if some politicians would benefit from successive boiling? Would they also become less offensive?
Love your videos :)
Thanks Poke mon!
That was some good information thanks.
I had to give your family a thumbs up! They are the real taste testers. Mine won't eat MREs. Tell your wife thanks for sacrificing the smell of her house. Great job! You need to get them all fake beards to wear in your video... lol
Hahah, that would be funny! Yeah, they are the real troupers :)
As Crocodile Dundee once said "you can live on it... but it tastes like shit"
Hahah, that movie was epic. I need to re-watch with my boy, he'd enjoy it!
I think you guys are confusing lotus with water lily. The former is what you can find in some takeout.
Hello, we eat them all the time its very good stuff lilly roots soup.
You must have a different variety than we do!
Hello are able to send me the rhizome stem ? Like slots of them ?
You should make pemican and hard tac for next time. Or spam and rice to keep meat on your bones next time.
We got some ideas!!!
It is not letting me reply to comments? Anyway tell Jeremy I said hey. I will be looking forward to your new videos.
The comments have been pretty buggy, I'm not sure why. I sent that along to him!
You dont eat water lily roots but you only eat the stems under the flower only, I know cause I'm from Bangladesh.
Not the same species.
Is it like a ginger? I wonder if it contains phychodelics alkaloids.
No, it's just not edible, waaaay too bitter.
The Wooded Beardsman but what if you smoke it. Lol
i think they boil taro root in lye....(maybe?)....try boiling in white wood ash
Might work!
try to smash it without boiling. and extract the starch.
You try stems , stems are too testy but the stem under the flower try too tasy boil it and mix salt and try too tasty
I freaking heard of a way to process this at one rare.moment of reading online. I can not for the life of me remember what it was but for some reason I have a feeling it was something like soak in lye water for 24, leach in moving water for 24 and then cook. I have to find that now cause I wanted to try it.
I have the same results with water lilly. I prefer to eat the creatures that live off or around the lilly.
Sounds like a plan :)
Has anyone bagged a boon animal yet on season 3? I have not seen it that far yet. Winter has to have a major suck factor.
I doubt they will with the tools they have, unless they get a solid archer on there. Could happen, but won't happen this year.
I know I sound like a Monday morning quarter back but I was getting so irritated watching that guy hunt boar that way.
I'm not sure they showed how he really hunting. If I was on the show, do you think I would risk botching my hunt just to catch the kill on film? LOL. Ha, I'd hack this shit out of that show. I probably wouldn't film much of what I did, cause I'd be there to win. In other words, who knows how he really hunted or how much. I think Dave is smart enough to have hunted almost the entire time, it just didn't work out for him. I'd like to interview Dave. I think he stands out among all of them, primarily because he pushed his limits.
lol yeah me neither. I know in my current state I wouldn't make it on the show. I weighed myself and I am down to 114 pounds. Back when I was healthy and in my prime I may have done well but it doesn't appeal to me being alone that long. I would like a woodsman show or a real pioneer style living of the land show. That would be fun.
I agree. I'd like to see pairs at least and more equipment so we can see actual skill play out. We already know how ever single show concludes. Everyone starves and is lonely! Now let's see people actually acquire some food and put those foraging skills and hunting and fishing skills against the others.
had an accident with a flame and am regrowing it. Very sad day. but half way back.
Looking good!
Thanks, I feel the beard adds credibility to my excessive wisdom. -_- lol
Great video
Dragon turnips (Jack-in-the-pulpit) are easier made edible. Maybe slicing it potato chip thin, and drying it for six months, might make it edible. I've done Dragon turnips this way. PAPER thin, dry for six months. They still had a little sting to them, and I personally couldn't eat a bunch of it, but it STILL tasted better than Lily Root.
I'd rather have a gun put to my head, and be forced to swallow a bowling ball, than to try water lily again... Ewwww!! (ShUdDeR)
I would not eat Jack in the pulpits because their pretty uncommon and a large corm is at least 25 years old. Also if you eat their corm (which is their brain) they aren’t coming back.
Only thing stopping me is the other weeds in the water, yikes!
:) Moose wade right in lol
The Wooded Beardsman they must not notice the weeds brushing against them.
It really doesn't seem appealing but have you or will you try making them like mashed potatoes? Buttery goodness might help
Nope. It wouldn't work unless I thinly sliced and leached, but if it needs 4 boils, is it worth it? Over a stove is one thing, but over a fire? Energy in =/= energy out!
The Wooded Beardsman yeah I meant on the stove to test, definitely not worth it in the woods. it was something I thought about.
so apparently even with alot of prep work it's not worth the effort
Nope, not worth it at all. Can you imagine the inputs over an open fire?
From what I have gathered after a bit of research is that the root is not really edible as you guys so perfectly demonstrated. One source I found indicates that the best time to eat the root is before the plant flowers. It will still be horrible, but less horrible. As far as the rest of the plant, here is a great link for a video talking about the actually edible parts of the lily plants, when to gather the parts and even how to cook the seeds. th-cam.com/video/GRNfmWUp7Fo/w-d-xo.html. Awesome video guys, you go above and beyond!
Thanks, I love Green Deen. He's got a great channel. Too bad he doesn't update anymore.
I agree 100%.
this is awesome good form family good form
Lmao good but funny video, and I tried arrowhead roots once I found the same thing I couldn't get that taste out no matter how many times I boiled them.