Beach Foraging

There’s always some decent wild food to be found near the shore, with an abundance of tasty treats just waiting to be gathered by a willing forager. The sheer amount of wild food that can be found along the coast is huge and the average person wouldn’t normally even consider going to gather their own meal, leaving more for the rest of us bushcraft types.

There are generally three main groups of food that can be found while beach foraging which are common shellfish, plants, and luxury foods. The first two types can be found almost anywhere and include things like seaweed and mussels, but for the luxury seafood, you’ll have to pick your spots a bit more carefully. Here’s a list of the different things to be found around the coast of Britain and the best ways to gather them.

Beach foraging shellfish

Cockles

Cockles don’t cling to anything like other shellfish and need a flat sandy beach in order to survive. If there are too many rocks or pebbles they’ll get ground to pieces when the tide washes them around, and if the beach is too steep they’ll just roll into deeper waters out of reach.

When on the beach look for the small streams that naturally form and dig around along the banks of them under the water. They like to hide up to 6 inches below the sand so a small hand rake can be useful to speed things up. The single best time to go and gather cockles is after a storm, with the more violent it is the better as the larger ones get washed around and settle on the surface making them easy pickings.

To clean and cook cockles take a look at our gathering cockles page which includes several recipes at the bottom.

Winkles

These tiny sea snails don’t look tasty but have a really good flavor and are the easiest type of shellfish to catch. They like to remain submerged after the tide has gone out and can be found in any section of rock that has a crack or bowl capable of holding water. They are by no means uncommon and you’d find it hard to go to a beach in the UK and not find any.

Mussels

Mussels attach themselves to either wood or any stone-like surface including pipes and concrete. Look for rocks on the beach in an area where they are only exposed above the tide for less than half the time it’s out. They don’t like to be out of water for too long and often won’t be found on the rock higher up the beach. To gather just grab them tightly and pull while twisting with no tools needed. If there’s a heavy seaweed presence on the rocks then there is a very good chance mussels will be hiding underneath, so grab a stick and have a look.

Limpets

In all my time foraging along the shore I can honestly say I have not once seen someone else gathering limpets. Most people don’t even see these as food but if you don’t mind how chewy they are the flavour is really nice. They can be found on rocks and piers and are by no means hard to find. To gather them use a stick and quickly knock them off in one go, but if you mess it up they’ll clamp down with surprising strength and become much harder to remove.

Cooking limpets is different from other shellfish and you can’t just throw them in some boiling water. The edible part is the large round sucker they use to cling to rocks with, and the body contains all the guts and parts you want to avoid. If you boil them like they are then all the bad bits will cook in the water and if you try and scoop them out the shell while alive you’ll most likely mash them to pieces. The trick to cooking limpets is to heat up some oil in a frying pan and place them sucker down on the hot surface. After about a minute they will be almost cooked but at this stage, you can take them out and the shell will come right off exposing a large bubble and some other nasty-looking parts. Remove everything that isn’t the large round orange-colored sucker and give it a quick rinse before dabbing it dry with some kitchen towel. At this point, you can return them to the frying pan to cook fully or chop them up and add them to a pie or other dish before cooking.

Whelks

Like winkles but much bigger. The best part is the large sucker part of the body but the whole thing can be eaten if cooked properly. They can be found in rock pools and large water-filled cracks on rocky outcrops, just like winkles but a much bigger version.

Crab

Digging around in rock pools and fishing with a crab line off sea walls will almost guarantee you’ll find some crabs, but the problem with looking for these creatures so close to the shore is that they’ll probably be quite small. The only way to find large crabs close to the shore is either to use a crab trap and leave it overnight near the rockiest area you can find, or dig around under the rocks at low tide as far out as you can get. The larger crabs can be very dangerous and sticking your hand into a crack to see if there’s a creature strong enough to break your thumb inside isn’t recommended.

Beach foraging coastal plants

Samphire

There are two types of this tasty treat, which are rock samphire and marsh samphire. The rock version is usually only found in very small patches and grows out of rocks at the back of the beach. It won’t grow in areas where the sea can touch it and won’t be found on the actual beach itself but has been known to grow out of walls and on coastal cliffs.

Marsh samphire is the best one in my opinion and when you find one plant you normally find hundreds. The best place to look is within two miles of the sea up an estuary in the areas where there are a few plants growing like grass or reeds. Marsh samphire doesn’t like to be submerged for too long and is usually found in areas only touched by the tide for a short period when it’s fully in. Be very careful when gathering marsh samphire as the areas it grows in can be dangerous as the mud is quite loose and easy to sink into. As for cooking either version just treat it like asparagus and cook until it’s soft but not too floppy, just make sure you only cook the green sprigs and not the central stem or roots since they are very tough and don’t share the same flavor.

Seaweed

The good news about seaweed is it can be found almost anywhere along the coast and there are no poisonous versions of this plant. There are a number of different types and they all have their own unique flavor so experiment with a few just in case the first one you try isn’t very nice. Something most people don’t know about seaweed is that it’s used in many different products due to its high collagen content and is used as a thickener in things like ice cream and makeup.

When cooking seaweed be prepared to change the water several times depending on the type you are cooking. After gathering give it a good wash, cut the leaves off, and discard the root or any central stems, then add it to boiling water and watch the collagen flow out. Some types can be done in a single boil but others will turn the water into what looks like wallpaper paste. If this happens pour the water away and pour in some fresh boiling water from a kettle and continue the cooking process, which should take around 15 to 20 minutes. The taste varies but just treat it like cabbage in terms of cooking and usage.

Sea holly

This pretty blue thistle-like plant has a root that can grow up to 6 feet long. The edible part of the plant is the root and leaves and should be boiled or baked until nice and soft. Sea holly normally doesn’t grow in large patches and you’ll obviously have to kill the plant to get the root so make sure you either have permission to dig up wild plants or find yourself in a survival situation.

Sea Kale

The leaves and stems are edible bits and taste quite different from each other. The stems taste a bit like weak-flavoured asparagus with the leaves having a more salty dark green vegetable taste to them. The stems are best when they are small and should be boiled until soft, but the leaves taste best if fried with a little salted butter or bacon.

Sea kale normally grows towards the back of the beach right before the grass of the mainland section starts and can often be found in large patches. If you’re after the leaves then picking a couple from each plant in a large patch won’t hurt them and can provide a steady source of sea kale leaves through the plant’s season.

Beach foraging luxury foods

Scallops and Oysters

Both of these shellfish like to be permanently submerged and don’t really move around as cockles do, so there’s no chance they will accidentally wander too far up the beach for easy gathering. The main method of gathering these is either dredging or diving, but neither method is ideal for the average forager. The only way to find these shellfish is to follow the tide out during the start of spring when the tide reaches much lower levels than it does throughout the rest of the year.

Razor Clams

Razor clams like flat sandy beaches and can be found in the lowest areas close to the low tide line. If there are too many rocks or pebbles on the beach they’ll get damaged when the tides in and also prefer flat areas so don’t bother looking on sloped beaches. To gather razor clams you can either dig them out which is a lot of effort, or simply use the salt method.

Grab a bottle of salt and look for one of the small keyhole-shaped openings they make. Pour some in the hole, wash it down with some seawater if needed, and then wait. If there’s one down there it should come up within two minutes at which point you can grab it by the top of the shell and slowly pull it out.

Shrimp

You can normally find shrimp in rock pools but there will only be a few of them and they are almost impossible to catch. The best way to gather shrimp is with a push net which is cheap to buy and easy to make. The further south you go in Britain the better the shrimping is, with the top spots being in Dorset and Cornwall. When the sea is calm, walk parallel to the shore 20 to 30 feet out with your push net running along the bottom. The net stirs up and shrimp get caught in the back and held there by the force of the water pushing into them.

The kind of shrimp you’ll find around the UK are very small but can be caught in large quantities if you find a good spot. They should be cooked whole by dropping them into boiling water, they only take 3 or 4 minutes of boiling and can be a pain to de-shell but worth it for the taste.