If you've ever eyed a patch of wild mushrooms on a hike and wondered whether dinner was staring back at you, chef Viet Pham has some advice: start with a bookshelf, not a basket.
Pham, a Salt Lake City chef with James Beard nominations for Best Chef: Southwest, has made a career out of cooking under pressure — he's appeared on Iron Chef America and most recently on Hulu's Chefs Vs. Wild, where chefs team up with survival experts to hunt, fish, and forage their way to a proper meal. Growing up in the Bay Area around food-obsessed parents, and later cooking in restaurants like Forage and Pretty Bird, he's kept one foot in the wilderness the whole time.
His entry point for beginners is refreshingly low-tech. Read about your own region first, he says — and check whether a local community college or adult education programme runs beginner foraging classes. On the book front, his picks are specific: All That the Rain Promises and More is his favourite mushroom identification guide (he admits the cover is goofy but rates its coverage of Western mushrooms), backed up by the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, and Thomas S. Elias's Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide for everything leafy.
One tool makes his essentials list: an Opinel mushroom knife, a folding blade with a curved edge on one end and a brush on the other for cleaning finds on the spot.
As for cooking outdoors, Pham's dream meal is simple: a fresh-caught trout roasted over juniper branches, the smoke flavouring the fish while hot embers crisp the skin. And if you're city-bound, he insists the mountain isn't out of reach. Pine needles can be pickled and whisked into a vinaigrette; juniper berries from the spice aisle can be crushed into sauces. It's a way to bottle a sense of place without a smoker or a campfire.
Why does this matter to travellers? Because foraging is increasingly part of the cabin-and-hiking holiday experience, and doing it well takes a bit of homework. Whether you're renting a remote cabin or just want your campsite cooking to taste less like instant noodles, Pham's setup — a regional field guide, a beginner class, a proper knife — is a genuinely affordable way in. A good guidebook and a folding knife cost less than one restaurant dinner, and the trout is free if you're lucky.
