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Photo The Cosmonaut, CC BY-SA 2.5 ca

Fiddleheads

The spring shoots of the ostrich fern: how to know them, how to pick them, and the cooking that keeps you from getting sick.

What you need

How

  1. Look along brooks and on wet river flats in spring. Ostrich fern grows in clumps, called crowns.
  2. Know the right fern: a tightly curled head with brown papery scales, a smooth green stem, and a deep groove on the inside of the stem like a celery stalk.
  3. Pick only shoots that are still tightly coiled and a few centimetres of stem.
  4. Take no more than half the shoots from each crown so the plant comes back next year.
  5. At home, rub off the brown scales and wash them in several changes of cold water.
  6. Boil them in plenty of water for 15 minutes, or steam them for 10 to 12 minutes.
  7. Throw away the cooking water. Then fry them in butter or eat them as they are.

Do and don't

Do
  • Cook them fully every time, even for a salad.
  • Pick where you know the ground is clean, away from roadsides and ditches.
  • Eat a small amount the first time.
Don't
  • Do not eat fiddleheads raw or lightly cooked. They can make you sick.
  • Do not pick fuzzy fiddleheads or ones with no groove in the stem. Other ferns are not the same.
  • Do not strip a crown bare.

Watch for

Danger
  • Raw or undercooked fiddleheads cause vomiting, cramps and diarrhoea within hours.
  • Bracken fern looks a little like a fiddlehead when young. It is fuzzy, grows alone in dry open ground, and is not safe to eat.
  • If you are not sure it is ostrich fern, leave it. See Plants to leave alone.

Notes

The cooking times are Health Canada's advice for fiddleheads.

They freeze well once they have been cleaned and blanched, so a good picking day gives you greens into the winter.

fernspringwild greensostrich fern

Updated 2026-09-22

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