When Rayleen Brown first started her business, , people thought she was crazy. “They said no one would want to eat that food,” she tells SBS Food. “But we love our bush tucker and we wanted to share it with our community and non-Indigenous people.
Kungkas Can Cook is an Alice Springs-based catering business with an online shop selling pantry items like saltbush dukkah, or quandong jam. Brown grew up in Darwin, where harvesting and collecting Aboriginal food on Country was part of her everyday life.
“Bush food makes sense. It’s grown on Country, so it’s plentiful and readily available.”
Knowledge of bush food and harvesting protocols have been passed down through generations of Indigenous Australians. An important step in sharing oral knowledge happens when groups of women go on Country with children for the wild harvest.
“There are ancient protocols during harvest time,” Brown says. “The connection to a particular plant could be held by a person who is the caretaker of the land the plant grows on. They would have to talk to their ancestors to ask permission to do picking. There are beautiful songs and songlines, a person holding a totem for the plant might be there.”
To practice sustainable wild harvest, harvesters consider what they take and what they leave behind. “We’re part of a food chain. It’s not just us taking food from country. We make sure we don’t take everything so that the birds and animals that rely on that food have something left.”
What are the benefits of bush food?
Bush food or bush tucker is an overarching term used to describe edible plants and animals that are native to Australia. Indigenous Australians have been hunting, wild harvesting, preserving and eating these foods for generations, and the cultural protocols and sustainable practices surrounding wild harvest have secured their survival for millennia.
“We believe there are about 6,500 edible native plants left post-colonialisation and with our changing climate,” says Rebecca Sullivan, a food educator and regenerative farmer who co-founded of Indigenous food brand, .
We’re part of a food chain.
Bush food has sustained Aboriginal Australians nutritionally and medicinally for thousands of years. Not only are they essential to the Indigenous Australian diet, many of these ingredients are used to heal and cure a myriad of ailments.
So, what exactly makes bush foods so nutrient-dense? One hypothesis from a found that the compounds that help protect Australian plant cells from environmental stress “are the most common sources of antioxidant capacities of fruits and vegetables primarily responsible for their health-enhancing properties.”
In other words, what benefits the plants also benefits those who eat the plants.
Here are five delicious bush foods that also have powerful medicinal properties, and are easy to integrate into your cooking.
Wattleseed
Harvested between October and December usually, is one of the most prolific bush plants. “Around 1,000 tonnes come off Country just in our region of the Northern Territory,” says Brown.
It’s a versatile plant which can be used across its lifespan. When green, wattleseed can be prepared like legumes, and when the seeds are dried, they’re ground.
“Indigenous people would collect the seeds and grind them into flour to make bread. There’s so much protein in those seeds. They were very important during times when large mammals had left the desert because of drought and only lizards were left. Without wattle, Indigenous people never would have survived.”
Bush tomato (katyerr)
Found in the arid deserts of Central Australia, katyerr is a blueberry-sized member of the solanum family that turns bright yellow when ripe. “It’s got a beautiful flavour,” says Brown. “There are caramel undertones, with a tamarind-like tartness. It reminds me of salted Asian plum.”
The diminutive tomato is ideal for chutneys, dressings and spice mixes. For contemporary cooking, bush tomatoes are typically frozen or dried soon after harvesting for optimal shelf life.
“ contain selenium, a mineral that plays a key role in metabolism,” says Sullivan. “They have more antioxidants than blueberries, and are rich in iron, vitamin E, folate, zinc and magnesium.”
Saltbush
The sage-coloured, jagged-edged leaves of pack an earthy, umami punch. Used as a substitute for salt, Indigenous Australians traditionally added saltbush leaves to flavour damper bread, also using the seeds as a substitute for flour.
“The leaves are commonly cooked and eaten, but they can also be used topically to treat cuts, stings, sores and burns,” says Sullivan. When eaten, saltbush can treat symptoms of scurvy.
Saltbush adds a delightful savoury accent to food, and is known to have a range of healing properties. Source: iStockphoto / THP Creative/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Pepperberry
The has antiseptic properties and was traditionally made into a paste to soothe sore teeth and gums. Similar to bush tomatoes, have even higher antioxidant properties than blueberries, and contain high concentrations of vitamin E, zinc, calcium, magnesium and iron.
Grown in southern NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, pepperberries are woody and peppery with notes of cinnamon. The flavours intensify if the fruit is dried.
Credit: Adam Liaw
Strawberry gum
is native to northern NSW and has uses from teas and medicine, to enhancing flavour in cooking. The flavour is sweet and fruity with balsamic vinegar-like tartness, making the leaves a flavourful addition to curries, mustard, vinaigrettes, preserves and chutneys.
“Indigenous Australians passing through the Northern Tablelands would chew the leaves of the strawberry gum for their sweet berry flavour, or moisten the leaves and lay them over a fire to release fragrant oils to calm stomach problems,” says Sullivan.
The plant also has anti-fungal and antibiotic properties, and Sullivan says it can help to balance gut bacteria.
For Indigenous people, bush tucker isn’t only about nutrition and medicine – it’s about the connection the Country and culture. And we are lucky to have access to such wonderful and unique foods, that heal and nourish while satisfying our taste buds.
