January is a terrible liar. It stands there in its grey coat looking mournful, insisting that nothing whatsoever is happening and could everyone please stop bothering it with questions. The fields look like old dishcloths. The lanes have turned into drainage systems. Even the birds have gone quiet, as if they’ve collectively decided that singing in January is beneath their dignity.
It’s all an act. The countryside hasn’t shut down at all – it’s just stopped showing off.
The problem is that we’ve become accustomed to nature performing for us. We want bluebells and butterflies and dramatic sunsets, preferably on demand and within reasonable walking distance of the car park. January refuses to play along. It offers hints instead of spectacles, which means you actually have to pay attention. This turns out to be quite good for you, though I appreciate that’s an annoying thing to discover.
I spend a lot of January walking around looking at the ground like I’ve dropped my car keys, which isn’t mystical or poetic – it’s just where the interesting bits are. And the really surprising thing is not that you can eat wild food in January. It’s that our ancestors knew this “one weird trick” thousands of years ago, and we’ve mostly forgotten them in favour of supermarkets and central heating.
The elder that won’t leave you alone
After heavy rain, I check certain elder trees. Not all of them (I’m not completely unhinged) but the ones I know. The elderly elders, if you will, with dead wood and a nice sheltered spot where they’re not getting battered by the wind.
This is where you find wood ear (Auricularia auricula-judae), which has to be the least glamorous name for a fungus that already looks like an anatomical misunderstanding. It grows on elder like small purple-brown notifications that decay is actually fine and everything’s going according to plan. The fresh specimens that appear after rain are all soft and rubbery, but they shrink back again when things dry out, clinging onto the wood like overcooked pasta on a dish.
Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. Suddenly every half-deceased hedgerow elder has the stuff, and you start to feel like you’ve activated some sort of foraging cheat code that’s been there all along.
Wood ear doesn’t taste of much (maybe miso soup) and it doesn’t smell interesting. This is precisely why it mattered to our ancestors, who weren’t judging their dinner on whether it sparked joy – they just wanted to know if it would keep them alive until March. Archaeologists find evidence of what our ancestors ate by looking at what didn’t rot: charred hazelnut shells, animal bones, piles of shells by the coast. The fungi and most of the plants? Gone. Rotted away centuries ago, which is inconvenient for research but fairly typical of organic matter.
But wood ear makes sense as winter food. It’s a thickener – the sort of thing that turns a disappointing broth into something with body. I slice it into strips and add it to stews near the end of cooking. It becomes pleasingly chewy, like it’s giving your jaw something useful to do. Treated with garlic, chilli, soy, and vinegar, it’s genuinely good. Or, and I cannot stress this enough, you can take dried pieces, soak them in rum, pat dry, then dip in molten dark chocolate – then watch your dinner guests experience profound confusion. The look on Richard Negus’s face when I served him chocolate wood ear is a memory I treasure.
While you’re examining elders, you might also spot scarlet elf cup (Sarcoscypha austriaca), which looks like someone’s dropped a load of red bottle caps in the woods as a prank. Bright crimson cups on damp leaf litter in the depths of January – nature’s way of reminding you that it hasn’t completely given up on colour.
They’re vaguely edible, but that’s not really the point. Finding one does more for your mood than a motivational poster ever could.
The greens that wake you up
January greens are small and bitey and thoroughly unpretentious, which makes a nice change after a month of relatives insisting they’re “fine, absolutely fine” while radiating tension like a poorly-shielded reactor.
Hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) grows in all the messy corners: gateways, track edges, anywhere the ground’s been disturbed and nobody’s tidied up properly. It’s peppery enough to make you sit up straight, which is useful when you’re eating your hundredth bowl of beige winter stew. Wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris) is even more assertive – properly bitter if you’re not careful. I use both as a garnish, chopped finely and stirred through hot food at the last second so they add life without adding aggression.
Then there’s gloriously-titled opposite-leaved golden saxifrage (Chrysosplenium oppositifolium), which grows beside streams looking absurdly green and healthy, as if spring has accidentally arrived early and is hoping nobody notices. It tastes somewhere between pepper and cucumber, and will inevitably need a good rinse before consumption.
Wild garlic (Allium ursinum) starts poking through in sheltered woods much earlier than March, though in January the spears are thin and tentative, like the land’s having a practice run before the main event. You wouldn’t take them yet – you’d just note where they are and feel pleased that something’s getting on with things.
The key principle is thus: January is for observing, not pillaging. If you clear out the early growth, you’re essentially stealing from March, which is both ecologically dubious and slightly tragic.
To the coast, with buckets
When inland winter gets oppressive, the coast sorts your head out. Partly it’s the horizon doing its usual horizon business, partly it’s the salt air, but mainly it’s the knowledge that the sea genuinely doesn’t care about your problems and is getting on with being the sea.
Also: food.
Sea beet (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima) grows along shingle and saltmarsh edges looking unbothered by the whole winter situation. Pick young leaves where there’s plenty, wash them thoroughly (it’s gritty), cook like spinach. It tastes minerally and salty because that’s literally what it’s been doing – processing salt spray and wind into plant matter. It’s chemistry with leaves.
And then shellfish. The old “R in the month” rule isn’t superstition – it’s practical observation. Cold water means less bacterial nonsense, fewer algal blooms, and the shellfish are in better nick. Mussels are sweet, cockles are substantial, oysters (where legal) are at their best.
Obviously don’t just wade out and start grabbing things. Check the minimum sizes for your area, make absolutely sure the water’s clean (harbours are not your friend here), and if in any doubt, don’t eat it. The best foragers aren’t the bold ones. They’re the ones who check first and are still alive to forage again.
But here’s the lovely bit: all around Britain’s coast there are shell middens – ancient rubbish heaps – proving that people have been doing exactly this for thousands of years. Coming to the shore when inland food was scarce, taking what the tide offered, leaving the evidence behind. The people who crossed the Doggerland land-bridge worked out this pattern long before anyone invented agriculture or three-for-two offers. They’d retreat coastward in autumn, live off winter abundance, then follow rivers back inland in spring. It’s a good system. Still works.
Signs and forward motion
By late January, hazel catkins are lengthening, alder is flowering over rivers, and blackthorn is preparing to bloom viciously early before anyone’s emotionally ready for it. These aren’t dramatic events – they’re small mechanical adjustments. But they’re enough. The light holds on a bit longer in the evening. The hedgerow changes its expression slightly. The wind carries a little less bite.
If you go out expecting to fill a basket, you’ll come home disappointed and damp. If you go out watching for signs, you’ll come home richer. Maybe not in your pockets, but in the understanding that winter is not a solid wall – it’s more of a corridor. Narrow, poorly lit, occasionally featuring unexpected puddles, but definitely leading somewhere.
January doesn’t get easier. It gets legible. And once you can read it – once you spot the wood ear on the elder, the peppery green in the gateway, the lengthening catkin – it loses some of its ability to flatten you.
The days are getting longer whether you’ve noticed or not. The countryside knew this weeks ago and has been quietly getting on with it while you were inside worrying. Which doesn’t solve January. But it makes it manageable. And honestly, that’s often enough.
Rum-infused, chocolate-covered wood ear
Less a recipe, more a party trick. We serve these on foraging courses. Richard Negus has never forgiven me, which only encourages me further.
Full credit to wild food legend Fergus Drennan. Standard warnings apply: be 100% certain of your ID before eating any fungus.Link to Wild Food People
