By Mike Ondrovich

Many outdoorsmen (and women – sorry ladies.) know about the Sassafras Tree.  Sassafras tea has been around for literally hundreds of years.  The Indians have used it for years.  As a matter of fact, Sir Walter Raleigh first imported it to England in 1602.  For a long while the Sassafras tree, root and bark was second only to tobacco in terms of quantity exported from the Americas.

Sassafras is prepared by drying the root and using it to steep tea.  Sassafras was the original precursor to Root Beer by way of being called “Sarsaparilla”.  Early colonialists boiled the root with molasses and fermented the mixture to make root “beer”.  Apparently, it was a pretty potent drink.

The process is simple.  Simply dig up the root from a younger tree and after cleaning, shave the root into slivers and dry them.  Then make tea as you normally would.  The taste if you’re unfamiliar with it is similar to that of root beer and with a little sugar is quite good.

On another note, the leaves of the Sassafras tree can be dried and ground into a powder called Filé powder which is used in some Creole gumbo and jambalaya recipes.  It is both a seasoning and a thickening powder.

The leaves are quite distinct and very hard to mistake with another tree.  There are three types of leaves on the tree, a three lobed, two lobed and a one lobed leaf.  One thing of particular note; when crumpled, the leaves emit a pleasant smell much like that of a perfume or cologne.

Mike Ondrovich

More Sassafras information can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassafras