Harvesting FIG LEAVES for Tea, Ice Cream, Syrup & Pesto

and so before you guys go out and start eating this and start cooking this and handling this there's something really important you have to know the branches of the of the Fig of the Fig Tree and also the leaves of a fig tree have sap in them and the sap is white you can very easily see it uh but it is costic to your skin it is toxic essentially and it will burn it will burn your skin all right fig lovers this is Ross the Fig boss today I'm harvesting fig leaves yes you can actually eat the leaves of a fig tree I had not known this in fact we've been uh I've been on a bit of a journey this year trying to figure out how to make use of all of my figs uh there's such an excess this year I can't give away enough I didn't do a tasting this year and have everybody over and eat all my figs um so this year you know we've been trying a lot of things in the kitchen I thought oh maybe I'll sell some maybe I'll go to a farmers market maybe I'll try to get into some restaurants and I figured you know what I'm going to go to these restaurants and they're going to say well Ross These are great but what do I do with them and I'm going to look at them and I say I eat them fresh call me a purist so I wanted to figure out what you can do with these with the figs themselves and also the leaves I'm going to be doing this year we're going to boil them and we're going to make them into pesto this is what I've seen people say it's good pesto I've seen it on like pizza I don't know what to think I haven't tried it yet the other things you can do with them which I have tried is you dry them people make tea out of them they wrap uh them around fish they wrap them around different meats you can also use them as like a substitute that you would use let's say a grap Leaf uh and bake different things inside of them um and this imparts a coconut flavor to them a fig Leaf flavor to them uh make a syrup so you can Infuse uh the flavor in this into a syrup just cook sugar and water in a pan cook that down to the consistency you want and while you're doing that you throw in some fig leaves making fig Leaf ice cream I have heard that it's like some of the best ice cream you can make I don't know if I necessarily believe that uh but this is I've heard this from multiple sources so you know there's so many uses for figs themselves and it's amazing to me that the leaf is even edible I don't even know you could eat it so let me guys let me show you guys how it's done really quickly we're going to choose a leaf lower down on the um on the branches here but just as an example if I wanted to take this one uh right here in front of you guys I'm I'm going to grab it by the leaf and cut it off by the stem so that way we're leaving very little stem we don't want to eat the stem of course you probably could I don't know every little thing about these leaves but certainly this is going to be more Woody and probably not very good to eat so um yeah I wouldn't uh if you're going to be making pesto as an example I would Harvest them without the stem leave the stem on there and what'll happen is over time this stem will just fall off the tree naturally um and then that way um you're harvesting them I think easier it's making it easier to process these leaves for pesto and you're not like pulling on the tree like this which then just gets sap on your arm now some people claim that they're immune don't be one of those people and think you're immune if you are handling these fig leaves and you're harvesting leaves like we're going like I'm doing today wear long sleeves wear gloves and when you're done wash your arms and your hands if you have exposed areas of your skin with dish soap and scrub it if you get the sap on your skin and it starts to feel quite itchy and you feel a burning sensation you need to get that off your skin right away and then when you're done like let's say later tonight as a an example the the night of wherever you felt that burning sensation or that itch put some hydrocortisone on it I you guys probably didn't think that I was a fig dermatologist but every year I get burns on my skin and I'm not even harvesting the leaves so you want to select probably a tree that is growing very quickly and also a tree probably that's done fooding um I wouldn't want to be harvesting the leaves earlier in the season it's now the middle of September so if we're doing it earlier in the season that's going to remove the tree's energy source right if you think about it this is how the tree gains energy from the Sun so if we remove the leaves when the trees need it most that's not good we also don't really want to be removing these leaves later in the season too much either because the trees need to lignify and if we remove all the leaves again there's no energ source to help Harden the branches and prepare them for the winter so I don't like doing this on potted trees I don't like doing this on inground trees that are young I think you need a tree that's at least been in the ground for 3 or four years before I would consider doing this and I would choose the leaves from branches that are already growing very fast and vigorous um like a sucker how do you know what a sucker is it started out here as pretty much nothing down here at the base and it grew a very thick branch by the way and this thick branch got to so far this season almost 7 or 8T tall so if you're going to be um getting leaves from uh suckers the leaves are going to be very healthy number one they're probably going to be bigger they're also probably going to have darker green color to them and probably have more nutrients in them all right fig lovers so that was the end of the video please if you have any recipes do me a favor put them down in the description I'd love to see what you guys are doing with your figs and also the leaves themselves um if you haven't already hit the subscri Subscribe button for me hit the like button for me check out my blog fig boss.com I'll put some uh links to recipes in the description thanks for watching this one