Foraging sumac

Sumac is one of my favorite plants to forage. It looks like an exotic plant, out of place here in Eastern Ontario. We have it here and there on our property and I often see it on the side of the highway and in parks. I use it to make a refreshing drink (sumac ade) and sumac spice.

It's best to pick sumac early; if you wait too long, you might see bugs inside the berry clumps and it is very time consuming to clean them out. To make sumac ade, I simply crush the berries in room temperature water and let them sit in the water overnight. Then, remove the berries and run the liquid through a coffee filter - if you don't, your throat may tickle a bit from the little hairs that fell off the berries. It's a delicious refreshing drink. We don't sweeten it, but some do,

To make sumac spice, I dry the berries in a dehydrator or toaster oven (smells delicious!). Then I use a mortar and pestle to separate the outside fuzz from the hard seed inside (some people use a blender instead). I rub the mix onto a fine sieve which separates the seeds and the fuzz.