DNR Accepting Recipes for Wild Maryland: The Holiday Edition

Marylanders Encouraged to Submit Holiday Recipes Featuring Foods Fished, Foraged, and Hunted

Roast Goose with Dumplings by Gabrielle Perret, from the Wild Maryland online cookbook. Maryland DNR photo

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is once again putting out a call to all wildlife and cooking enthusiasts to submit their favorite recipes for its Wild Maryland online cookbook, this time for the holiday season. 

The department encourages Maryland’s hunters, anglers, and foragers to submit their best holiday recipes, along with photos of their dishes, featuring Maryland species. 

“Marylanders share many wonderful traditions during the holiday season, especially recipes passed down from generation to generation,“ said DNR Secretary Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio. “The Wild Maryland holiday edition cookbook will showcase the recipes of our very own hunters, anglers, and foragers embracing the bounty of our lands and waters.”

Submissions must include a list of required ingredients, easy-to-follow preparation instructions, and feature a species found in Maryland. Adding a few words about the history behind a recipe is encouraged.

Some of Maryland’s most popular hunting and fishing seasons take place just before or during the holidays, making it an ideal time of year for planning a wild feast – blue crabs, oysters, catfish, and trout are for the taking in our waters; while deer archery, migratory game bird, and small game seasons are ongoing, and deer firearm season begins Nov. 26.

The department created the online cookbook, Wild Maryland in 2021, and subsistence hunters, anglers, and wild game/fish cooking enthusiasts submitted recipes from all regions of our state. 

Using the Wild Maryland website, recipes can be searched by species category. In addition, a special resources section is included with tips for wild foraging, directions for fileting a fish, a link to DNR’s guides to Hunting and Trapping and Fishing and Crabbing, and more. The department has also launched a Pinterest page, where users can pin recipes to their boards and share them with other Pinterest users.

Submissions will be accepted throughout the holiday season. Anyone interested can send their recipes to Recipes.DNR@maryland.gov. Entries received may be published in a future edition of Wild Maryland.