LOW TIDE is Back! Coastal Foraging

All right guys guess what time it is it's low tide and in November the sea urchin are usually they usually have the most yield during this time in the fall so we're gonna go out and collect some sea urchin maybe some mussels as well and some seaweed and maybe see what else we can find in oh my god there's a great light careful you bite he bites careful of the sharks out here look at that somebody's already out there beaming to it beautiful day good thing about coming to the low tide in the winter is that all the low tides are in the evening which means you don't have to get up early but the sun goes down super early so most of the time it's in the dark so it's not a good thing but today it's early enough low tide i think is at four o'clock 4 p.m and right now i think it's about 3 30 so we got perfect time sunsets before five so we do have to we only have an hour and a half at most so before the sun sets but that should be plenty of time for us to gather a bunch of sea and whatever else oh i see some abalone obviously those are off limits i just saw warden at the parking lot and he was looking in his binocular at the tide pools i think he was checking out these people seeing what they were collecting so even if you don't see them when you're out here they're watching you from over there so make sure you're following the rules and not taking any or touching any abalone either be mindful of that they're always watching oh man just take a look at this one count how many abalones 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 can i count that one already 13 14 15 16 17 yeah 18 19 20 all over the place as you can see they got plenty of food here a lot of seaweed that's growing so that's why they've kind of congregated in this area if you look that way there's nothing there's no abalone there because there are no there's no seaweed there's no food so they're just concentrated in these weedy spots there's some out literally out here the tide's way out so she's giving him some water keeping him wet and making sure they don't die they don't dry up in the sun there's a little guy over there there's a look at even this guy right here you almost mistake him for a rock they only have to wait you know another a few more hours and the tide will feed back and they'll be underwater again many abalone it's insane oh yeah i'm gonna go get him right now after we watch this guy move two more inches no no take forever from where dawson is to me it just keeps going the abalone like you see how many you can count a lot of them are blending in so it's hard to tell sometimes but i would say that is a healthy population of abalone there's some big ones in here too a lot of these are smaller smaller side but there are some big ones what's up man i was just telling my son about you no way that's funny is it cool if i take a picture yeah of course of course you getting some muscles yes sir thank you man just um we drove all the way from san francisco oh no way yeah there's a good spot oh i was just telling my son oh my god dude i watch all your videos awesome thank you man i'm joseph joseph yeah nice to meet you man i learned a lot so much about from you especially right right now i was like thank you thank you you got any advice on the uni on the uni yeah i mean they're all over the place yeah but i noticed some of them like packs them open some of them empty so the what i found is that um the closer to the seaweed you said closer to the seaweed exactly it's usually the ones that are like on the edges like kind of almost poking out and there's if there's seaweed around them yeah those ones i found the best because but yeah i know these guys right here these they're not going to have anything yeah yeah yeah yeah once thank you thanks for watching appreciate it no problem i had to record that one because he started screaming as soon as he saw me that was funny always uh great running into the subscribers here uh anywhere you know whether it's a store or you know just grocery shopping and stuff on the it's always great to meet the faces behind the view view counts you know what i mean so now i'm just trying to grab some mussels there's some nice plump ones here but they're a little tricky nice muscles here that's a nice fatty if you want to find mussels in california it's pretty easy you go to any rocky beach most likely there's going to be mussels this beach in particular is nice because there's not much sand here it's mostly rock there's sand over there but if you can stay away from the sand and the sand here is kind of gritty too it's kind of thick um so that it doesn't get into the muscles if you stay away from the fine sand as far as you can from that you're usually going to have nice clean muscles inside um otherwise you know you got to purge them for a while make sure they spit it out and they never really spit out all the sand i feel like so if you get them from a sandy area that's just a little tip if you can find somewhere with less sand no rocks you'll have nice clean muscles so if you heard his question earlier any tips on sea urchin see i would pick from a spot like this you see how there's kelp here see it's been like kind of eaten off so they're probably eating at that kelp and they're on the edges there's like little bits of seaweed here and there so they're likely eating that and any of the seaweed right here that was probably getting eaten too by the sea urchin so spots like this is where i would harvest and not i don't know if you can see underwater there but there's no seaweed or kelp or anything in this zone i would kind of stay away from those sea urchin you can always check it see if it's um any value but uh i think the ones that are closer to the food source are most likely going to have the biggest yield this guy in here might be a good one if you've never picked one of these before they sound like velcro you hear that they do have like these velcro feet that they use to latch onto the rocks they're not just like coming off easily all right we'll take a look at a few of these see how they look hold on there's a big one hiding right here they use rocks to camouflage themselves they're like wearing a hat basically it's a bigger one so hopefully that's got some good meat in there let's check these out okay let's crack this guy open sorry about the seaweed and right in the camera i got pliers oh look at that yeah this is a little guy but the yield inside is great you can see how much yellow is in there that's all uni looks like they're already going into spawning mode once you start seeing it kind of ooze that white stuff this is a male hence the white stuff but uh you can still eat it still oh delicious sweet the purple urchin are so much sweeter they're tiny but no they're very delicate you gotta handle them with extra care but i'm telling you some of the best things you can you can eat ever okay let me show you one see that that size uni you know it's uh it's not a lot but out of that little guy it's good oh that's so good oh well i'm happy when you're collecting something like mussels you want to move around a bit you don't want to stay in one spot collect everything from one spot but for sea urchin they can move around and they can wander around and all that so not too worried about collecting too many in one spot you just take all of them from this spot more i just kind of fill its space and with the mussels they can't move so that's why you move around make it more sustainable for the long term i'm curious about this bigger one yeah this is a nice big one check that out let's just get into it i usually have a knife and right now so i do have a knife on me but it was in my pocket inside my waders and then i couldn't find it after i put my waders on and then a few minutes later i feel my knife went into went down in here in my waders and i can't get it out it's right here i can't get it out unless i take the waders off or if i'm able to move the knife all the way up but i was at the at the car i was tripping out because i was like i just had a knife pocket knife in my pocket and it's gone and i couldn't find it anywhere because that was very uncomfortable walking walking with the knife in my shoe basically or on my ankle so this one bigger sea urchin but the yield is it's okay it's not too bad could be better yeah i mean it's you get more than that little guy flavor and this one's more firm it's not melting this is the perfect one oh flavor is so good oh man i miss the low tide man the tides haven't been lining up very much and so i haven't been getting out into the tide pools doing this but it's nice to be back this is my favorite part just squatting and eating uni in a tide pool just in my asian squat and eating uni and it's like the most asian thing you can do that's good stuff look at this he's snacking on some still over there munching away on some sea urchin i can see him here we go there he goes eating fresh uni every time i look over he's eating one not sure how many are making it into the bucket what's this look at that this is like an aquarium dude it's so cool oh look at him pretty sure these are like little blue rockfish maybe some kind of rockfish baby oh yeah that's a blue rockfish well there's a bigger one something else oh greenling it's a greenling there you go let's see if i can it's coming they're coming come on oh that guy almost got it that's cool that is super cool okay okay that's a good boy oh ready for the shark attack oh there it is okay we made it back and i think it's a very appropriate time for a drink break from athletic brewing today i'm drinking the upside down golden cheers guys as you guys know athletic brewing is one of our favorite sponsors here on outdoor chef life they're a great team over there and the brand itself is all about protecting the outdoors which we love with their two for the program they've donated millions of dollars into protecting the great outdoors that's amazing that's great work that they're doing over there not only that but these non-alcoholic brews are a game changer they are delicious they have tons of flavors to choose from and they have limited flavors just for the holiday season so if you haven't tried athletic brewing make sure to give them a try you can find them in stores all across the states and you can get them online as well on their website it's refreshing it's flavorful and i can't believe it's non-alcoholic thanks to athletic brewing for sponsoring another video and now it's time to process the uni and get the cooking going all right guys we're back home as you can see we got our catch in here uh so the so uni and mussels if you put some wet kelp or seaweed in with them um the uni and both of them will stay alive much longer and they'll actually stay alive for a couple days at least as long as you know it's um nice and cool and it's not too warm i think i'm gonna try to grab all of the mussels right now i'm gonna have to move all the uni out of the way if you put them on ice they'll die within you know just uh maybe a few hours ice is good for keeping them fresh once they're dead but if you want to keep them alive i would recommend using like the seaweed and you know you can put some ice packs in there but you don't want that fresh water touching them so you want to keep it just some ice packs or like frozen bottles of water and the seaweed and you can put all the mussels in there all the clams sea urchin they'll stay alive much longer that way these mussels they need a bit of cleaning but i'm a little too lazy to do that right now so uh i'm just gonna throw them in a boiling pot boiling pot of uh salt water just and make sure to close the lid put it on high all the way up if you need a gift for the holidays got these beautiful wax canvas aprons handmade and uh you can get them on our website outdoorscheflife.com and you know i think we have a couple different colors but this is the blue and we got a brown as well and we might have a couple leather aprons in stock as well for now today i'm gonna make like a mussel chowder so i'm just boiling those mussels crack them open once they're open i'll take all the meat out just got to make sure as soon as they start opening you want to kill the heat and i'm gonna start taking them out um and then i'll top it with uni i'm gonna put gochujang in to the chowder so it's like a gochujang chowder should be really delicious carrot i got some kabocha here as well kabocha is very delicious you can eat the skin too you don't have to peel it trust me it looks tough but it is not tough at all once it's cooked my mussels are boiling now i'm gonna kill the heat if you overcook mussels they start shrinking a lot so you want to just kill that and i need a bowl so we're gonna save some of this um stock here mussel juice use that for a chowder base okay let's just uh give it a try oh yeah and before you eat mussels make sure you call the biotoxin hotline to make sure it is all good and it's safe to consume that's honestly perfect not sandy at all like i was saying if you stay away from the sandy beaches nice and clean these have not been purged whatsoever beautiful shell too delicious i stood out there eating uni for for a while i probably ate a dozen uni just right in the thai pool i can get real zoned out on eating seafood okay i've gone ahead and removed all of the meat from the shells looks delicious i think i'm gonna chop it up kind of do it like a clam chowder usually chopped up i'm gonna do a little rough chop on them there's a lot of muscles there onion let's do a little bit of the athletic brewing and this is the upside down golden there you go but a little bit for the pot and a little bit for me cheers guys that's good stuff that's really good very refreshing let's add in a nice nub of butter let's add in our mussel stock a little bit of a setting there bring that to a boil let's add in our vegetables delicious i'm gonna add a bit more water and i'm also gonna add some black trumpet mushrooms these are actually still from last season we harvested from our property but they're already starting to pop this year so i gotta use this up oh yeah i usually use um add a bit of heavy cream but i don't have any heavy cream so i'll just use some milk i'll add some flour to thicken it as well so it should be all right this is just flour and water i'll add that in oh you know what i just realized i haven't seasoned it at all but we got the salt from the um the mussel juice the mussel water so it should be all good and add the add the flour water to thicken things up as soon as that comes to a boil it's going to be super thick okay now i'm gonna add the mussels back in and that's pretty much done but i'm not done i gotta prep the uni two spoons boom right into the mouth oh it squirted me never had that happen and look at that crack crack them in half take them in half i'm gonna crack them in thirds i did not bring the salt water from the ocean so i have water here and i'm gonna add my own salt i'll usually just go collect the uh ocean water for the uni put it in like a tupperware but this works too just not as as good as the uh the real stuff of the ocean yeah that's about the right saltiness it's about three percent ocean water i like using the silicone spoon it's nice and uh gentle on the uni pull it up like that and then yeah this is nice really nice one just throw in that salt water you'd think they get really salty from being in the salt water but that's where they live and it's not salty straight out of the ocean it's gonna do the same thing it's actually salt water that's in um this water here it's actually best to use yeah these are pretty solid man this is a solid solid yield look at that one that's a fatty out of this little guy this one is like really clean this would be like double double a grade look at how uh perfect it is the color is amazing the texture look at that that's perfect it's a perfect looking uni so this one not a grade a bit milky more like b or c the color is also very pale so yeah we're just out here judging uni still gonna be delicious they're all gonna taste the same now make sure they're all clean and then just place them right onto the paper towel to drain the salt water that's about and i baked a beautiful sourdough this morning my sourdough game is becoming like nice i'm nice dawson just noticed something i was like okay it's ready she's like oh did you put the gochujang i was like oh i forgot i was doing that i didn't put any gochujang did you say that in the beginning too that you're making gochujang normally i would add you know much earlier but i'll just do it right now right there can you imagine i hadn't said anything and then you upload that everyone's just like so where's the gochujang so you lied i'm gonna get a nice healthy spoonful okay guys now it's done and i have the uni right here and i can top the chowder with some uni too but you know what i'm gonna keep it on the side for now oh i didn't come by come on come on you okay gochujang mussel chowder would have been funny i was like maybe it's missing something but i think it'll be good still well you topped up your gochujang chowder so i was expecting it i didn't get to try it last time i've been really disappointed it is better with the heavy cream but it's still still very good it's a lighter lighter chowder and there's also black trumpets in here too if you haven't gotten one that's a good fall soup yeah oh and these black trumpets are so good these are still from our stock that's from last year last year last season i just was saying we gotta uh get through it so we could harvest a new this year's all right got the uni on there on a mussel and this uni is so sweet this bread uni has the creaminess it's very sweet okay let me try it with my sourdough just a little sourdough and now now for a little uni sourdough action that's that's the stuff it's been a long day really long day i had a long morning too a busy morning i was laying bricks this morning and built the whole wood stove chimney yeah and then went straight to the low tide got the uni cup back straight to processing this stuff actually i got some fishing rods ready for tomorrow too so just been non-stop today it's the first like really good week on the ocean yeah good tide good weather gotta take advantage what we can make sure it's out there there's a lot of uni to be had and there's a lot of fun i'm just having a great time being out there and yeah i just kind of missed it i missed being out there it was a lot of fun anyways guys thank you all for watching if you like the video make sure you hit that thumbs up subscribe and we'll see you guys on the next one peace