In place of seed oil, that means butter, tallow, ghee, and good cream. In place of nut butter, it means honey, maple syrup, eggs, and whole chopped nuts where a nut belongs at all. Nothing here is harder to make than what came before. It just leans on fat and sweetness that's closer to the animal or the tree it came from.

Chaga powder, butter, and eggs set out on the counter
01

In the Cup, Fed on Fat

Chaga tea takes to real fat better than people expect. A spoonful of butter or a pour of cream doesn't just enrich the drink, it slows down how the body takes in the caffeine or the chaga itself, which is part of why this style of drink has stuck around in one form or another for a long time.

Recipe 01

Cabin Butter Coffee

5 minutes  ·  1 serving

Ingredients
  • 1 cup strong brewed coffee
  • 1 tsp chaga powder
  • 1 tbsp grass-fed butter or ghee

Blend all three together for about thirty seconds until it comes together with a thin layer of foam on top. No coconut oil, no MCT oil, just butter doing the work it's always done. Drink it in place of breakfast on a cold morning and it holds you a good while. Ghee works just as well if that's what's in the cupboard.

Recipe 02

Chaga Bone Broth Tonic

5 minutes  ·  1 serving

Ingredients
  • 1 cup hot bone broth
  • 1 tsp chaga powder
  • Salt, to taste
  • Cracked black pepper

Whisk the chaga powder into the hot broth until fully dissolved, then season. Savory rather than sweet, and closer to a meal than a drink. This is what I reach for on a cold afternoon out at the woodshed when tea feels thin and coffee feels wrong. Simple, warming, no sweetener needed.

Cabin butter chaga coffee
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02

Savory and Simmered

Chaga's earthiness works as well next to meat and root vegetables as it does next to maple and chocolate. It's a background note here, not the star, doing the same job a bay leaf or a dried mushroom does in a good stew.

Recipe 03

Chaga Venison Stew

20 minutes prep, 2.5 hours simmering  ·  serves 4

Ingredients
  • 2 lb venison shoulder, cubed
  • 2 tbsp tallow
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 2 carrots, sliced
  • 2 potatoes, cubed
  • 6 cups bone or beef broth
  • 1 tbsp chaga powder
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

Brown the venison in tallow, then build it into a stew with the onion, carrot, potato, and broth, simmering covered for 1.5 to 2 hours until tender. Stir in the chaga powder during the last hour. The chaga doesn't announce itself. It rounds out the broth and gives it a depth that usually takes a lot longer to build. Serve it the way we do, in a bowl by the wood stove with the dog underfoot.

Recipe 04

Chaga Maple Butter Roasted Roots

10 minutes prep, 40 minutes roasting  ·  serves 4

Ingredients
  • 3 carrots, cut into batons
  • 3 parsnips, cut into batons
  • 2 cups cubed squash
  • 3 tbsp butter, melted, divided
  • 2 tbsp maple syrup
  • 1 tsp chaga powder
  • Salt, to taste

Toss the vegetables in half the butter and salt, and roast at 400°F until the edges start to caramelize. Mix the remaining butter with the maple syrup and chaga powder, brush it on, and roast ten more minutes. The glaze goes slightly dark and glossy in the heat, and the earthiness of the chaga meets the sweetness of the maple somewhere in the middle. Good alongside anything off the grill.

Recipe 05

Chaga Spice Rub

5 minutes  ·  makes about ½ cup

Ingredients
  • 2 tbsp chaga powder
  • 2 tbsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tbsp ground black pepper
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp coarse salt
  • 1 tsp dry mustard

Combine everything in a jar and shake to mix. No oil in it at all, just the dry rub pressed straight onto venison, wild boar, or a good cut of beef before it goes over open fire or into the oven. The chaga adds an earthiness to the crust that people notice without being able to name it.

Chaga venison stew simmering on the wood stove
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03

Baked and Sweet

This is where butter and eggs carry the weight that seed oil and nut butter usually carry in a recipe. The results are richer and a little heavier, which isn't a drawback. It's closer to how these things were made before shortcuts became the default.

Recipe 06

Chaga Baked Custard

10 minutes prep, 40 minutes baking  ·  serves 4

Ingredients
  • 4 eggs
  • 1½ cups cream
  • ½ cup whole milk
  • ⅓ cup maple syrup
  • 1 tsp chaga powder

Whisk everything together, pour into ramekins, and bake in a water bath at 325°F until just set, about 40 minutes. Simple, old-fashioned, the kind of dessert that doesn't need a name to be understood. The chaga gives the custard a faint earthy edge underneath the sweetness, closer to a coffee custard than a chocolate one.

Recipe 07

Chaga Butter Fudge

10 minutes + chilling  ·  makes about 20 pieces

Ingredients
  • 10 oz dark chocolate, chopped
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1 tsp chaga powder
  • Flaky sea salt
  • Chopped walnuts (optional)

Melt the chocolate and butter together slowly, stir in the honey and chaga powder, then pour into a lined dish and chill until firm. Finished with flaky salt and a scatter of chopped walnuts if you want the crunch, left plain if you don't. No cream needed, no nut butter holding it together, just chocolate, butter, and time in the refrigerator.

Recipe 08

Chaga Honey Trail Bites

15 minutes + chilling  ·  makes 12–14

Ingredients
  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • ½ cup chopped dried cranberries
  • 1 tbsp chaga powder
  • Pinch of salt
  • ½ cup honey
  • 3 tbsp butter, melted

Warm the honey and butter together, then stir into the oats, cranberries, chaga powder, and salt until it holds. Pressed into a lined pan, chilled until firm, then cut into bars or rolled into balls. No nut butter binding it, the honey and butter do that job just as well once they've had time to set up cold. Good for a coat pocket on a morning walk through the bush.

Recipe 09

Chaga Rice Pudding

10 minutes prep, 35 minutes simmering  ·  serves 4

Ingredients
  • ¾ cup short grain rice
  • 3 cups whole milk
  • 1 cup cream
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • ¼ cup maple syrup
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 1 tsp chaga powder

Simmer the rice slowly in the milk and cream with the cinnamon stick, stirring occasionally, until thick and tender, about 35 minutes. Remove the cinnamon stick and finish with the maple syrup, butter, and chaga powder stirred in near the end. The chaga settles into the pudding the same way it settles into oats, present but not shouting about it. Served warm on a cold evening, it's about as close to comfort food as this kitchen gets.

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04

A Few Notes on This Batch

Butter and tallow behave differently than oil in a pan or a bowl. They solidify when cold, which matters in anything you're chilling to set, like the fudge or the trail bites. Melt them fully before combining with the other ingredients, and give the finished dish real time in the refrigerator. Rushing that step is the most common way these recipes come out soft instead of holding their shape.

Honey and maple syrup replace nut butter's job of binding as well as sweetening, but they're thinner, so a mix leans more on chilling and less on the ingredient itself to hold together. That's fine. It just means patience matters more than it did before.

And as before, use good chaga. Wild-harvested, birch-grown chaga that's been properly dried and ground behaves better in the kitchen than a cheap cultivated product, in color, in flavor, and in what it actually brings to the dish. Start with the real thing and the rest follows.

Available in the General Store

Wild-Harvested Canadian Chaga Powder

100% wild harvested by hand from the Canadian boreal forest, then finely ground and ready to use in anything above.

Shop Chaga Powder — $44.99 →

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