Man says he’s saving £200 a month by foraging for nettles and eating acorn pancakes

A Bristol man has managed to save £200 each month by foraging for nettles, wild mushrooms and dandelions.

Lewis Pidoux, 41, first began picking blackberries with his dad as a boy, but picked up the hobby full-time in his early 20s.

Almost two decades in, wild ingredients now make up about a fifth of his diet – and his inventive meals include nettle pakora and acorn pancakes.

Having recently gone part-time in his job as a chef to focus on growing his YouTube channel, Lewis wants to make foraged food almost 100% of his diet.

He says it saves him £200 a month on his food shopping at Aldi during spring – and £100 in cooler months when he can’t forage.

‘Foraging is seen nowadays as a niche hobby, but it’s the way our ancestors survived, so I think there’s a deep need to do it,’ he said.

‘It’s part of us all. Some of the fruits that I forage can be very expensive if you get them in the shop. Some of the mushrooms, like porcinis, can be really expensive.’

Lewis started posting on YouTube six years ago in a bid to educate people on wild foods, but noticed a spike in interest around the time of the pandemic.

‘People had time off work, so they were getting a bit more interested in being outside,’ he said. ‘I also think there was that slight fear of food scarcity and people did genuinely wonder what would happen if the shops ran out of food.’

A typical breakfast for Lewis could be acorn pancakes or a dandelion smoothie, but he loves to make sea beet frittatas and wild mushroom broth for lunch.

For dinner, he often cooks up a chickpea and nettle curry or makes southern fried ‘chicken of the woods’ – using a ‘bright orange, yellowy mushroom that tastes exactly like chicken and has the same texture’.

Despite a recent warning from sustainability chiefs that TikTok-inspired ‘middle-class foragers’ were stripping forests bare and risking their own health, Lewis reckons a ‘mixed demographic’ is behind the trend.

‘I’ve not seen an increase in middle-class foragers’, Lewis said. ‘It’s probably been an increase in younger people getting into foraging, which is quite good.’

He says foragers should ‘only take as much as you need’, adding: ‘I go out with a basket and just take enough for a few days.’

Lewis says his biggest worry is that wild spaces in the UK are being destroyed – meaning education is more important than ever.

He reminds beginners that uprooting protected plants is illegal, as is foraging on sites without permission from the landowner.

And he warns that dangerous plants like giant hogweed – which can damage your skin even if you just touch it – should be avoided at all costs.

‘It can be dangerous if you’re trying to learn too many plants at once,’ he said.

‘Pick two or three, learn everything about them, what they look like and if they have poisonous relatives. Go on guided tours and day classes.

‘Don’t use plant-identification apps for foraging because they can be really dangerous.’

In spring and summer, Lewis sources his fruits and green vegetables entirely from the wild.

He only buys meat and root vegetables from shops during the hotter months, while he goes foraging every other day.

In the winter, he tries to use foraged ingredients as much as possible but sometimes buys nuts and seeds from shops when he cannot find them in the wild.

His staple foraged ingredients include wild garlic, dandelions, nettles and mushrooms.

Buoyed by the growth of his YouTube channel, Lewis is considering switching to a fully foraged diet for a period of time.

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