Pteridium aquilinum

Pteridium aquilinum
"fiddlehead" with last year's dry fronds behind

Bracken Fern (Pteridium aquilinum) grows everywhere, all around the globe, on every continent. It is used for food in many places, but seems to have an especially strong following in Korea. Even if it is all the same species, there will be regional variations, so here is my experience with my local type.

Bracken Fern or Brake grows in large areas up in our mountains, usually along with aspen trees. The aspens grow above it, but the ferns tend to shade out most other plants. If you find it, you will find a lot of it. I found it just getting started at the end of May, when the shoots were just the right size and tenderness for picking.

The shoots are called fiddleheads, because they are young ferns, but unlike most ferns, Bracken Fern shoots do not look at all like fiddles. Instead of a spiral, the stem is bent over once, in an inverted U shape, and the fronds are curled up in two rows, getting ready to spread out on each side of the stem. It looks more like a clenched eagle claw than a fiddle. There will be plenty of dry brown fronds on the ground from the year before, so you can check some other characteristics. They are twice pinnately branching, the first time opposite or nearly opposite, the second time alternate, and then the simple leaflets form a row along each branch.

Bracken contains a known carcinogen called ptaquiloside, which is fairly volatile, and should be deactivated by cooking. Hank Shaw has a well researched description of Bracken and how to cook it on his blog, "hunter-angler-gardener-cook". It also contains a B1 inhibitor, so you may not want to eat it all the time, even if they do it in Korea. Since it is only good when sprouting, it would take a lot of effort to eat all the time anyway.

I cooked it in the manner recommended by Koreans: boil it in salt water for a few minutes, then soak it in cold water for an hour, then saute in whatever fashion you like. I tried it sauted in butter and salt, and also with sesame oil, onions, and soy sauce. But I also couldn't resist tasting a little raw and before sauteing for comparison. 

When raw, the stem is tender, fairly bland, and mucilaginous (slimy), with the outer skin being kind of crisp. The fronds are also quite tender, and have a crisp texture, without the mucilaginous quality of the stems. There is some bitterness there, but not very much.

After boiling and soaking, they are about the same, still tender, but not actually crisp any more.

Unfortunately though, the saute step seemed to bring out quite a bit of bitterness, especially as an aftertaste. I didn't enjoy them much in the butter and salt saute. (Actually, I used a soy-free margarine, because some of us here are lactose-intolerant.) The taste is like a fairly bitter, but otherwise bland, asparagus. The sesame/soy saute was better, with the strong flavors offsetting the blandness, and maybe hiding most of the bitterness.

Other people have reported much better results with this plant, so it could be that our regional variety is just not as good. In any case, the best results for me came from simply boiling them. Without the saute step, it is probably a good idea to change the water at least once.