Chef Dale Buchheister started his ramp bisque before he arrived at the Callicoon Depot.

The ramp bottoms had been charred the night before, flavoring the oil Buchheister would use to start the bisque. The leafy green tops waited nearby, ready to be added as the soup came together.

“I don’t want to take the time to cook everything in here,” Buchheister told the crowd Saturday during his demo at Ramp Fest.

With an electric burner, an immersion blender and a table full of prepared ingredients, Buchheister used the demonstration to show more than a recipe. He walked attendees through how to build a smooth vegetable bisque, how to layer flavor and why ramps, one of the Catskills’ most recognizable spring ingredients, are useful enough to build a dish around.

Buchheister began with the ramp-infused oil and a “hefty dollop” of garlic-herb butter. He added scallions, celery, mushrooms, carrots, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, vegetable stock and milk from Tonjes Farm Dairy, explaining each step as he went.

The scallions, he said, were not there to compete with the ramps, but to add “diversity in flavor.” The potatoes gave the soup body. The carrots and sweet potatoes added sweetness and earthiness. Celery, he said, works quietly in the background, absorbing and enhancing the flavors.

“Celery doesn’t seem to add flavor, but it will enhance the flavors of the things that you have in there,” Buchheister said.

The demo was part cooking class, part food science lesson and part performance. Buchheister explained why he prefers avocado oil to olive oil for cooking, calling olive oil “a finisher, not a starter” because of its lower burn temperature and stronger flavor. He explained mirepoix, the classic combination of onion, carrot and celery, and compared it to similar flavor bases used around the world, including the Holy Trinity in New Orleans cooking.

He also showed the crowd how he thinks through a dish without relying strictly on a written recipe.

“A lot of the cooking I do, I rarely follow recipes,” Buchheister said. “I kind of more just follow a process.”

That process, he explained, starts with understanding the base of a soup and then adjusting it to the featured vegetable. In this case, the featured vegetable was the ramp.

Buchheister told attendees that a simple version of the soup could be made with potato, leek, chicken stock and milk or cream. His version went further, using extra vegetables, herbs, white pepper, vegetable stock, sherry vinegar, white wine and a small amount of black truffle oil to build what he called a more decadent soup.

Still, he said the point was not to bury the ramp.

“This soup is not about heat,” Buchheister said, explaining why he avoided stronger spices such as cayenne, chili powder, cumin and coriander. “What I want to be the feature flavor is the ramp.”

Ramps are sought after, Buchheister said, because they are both versatile and briefly available.

He described them as similar to a wild leek that grows in deep forests shortly after the snow melts, when the soil is still muddy and before the forest canopy fills in. Once the trees leaf out, the ramp season is over.

“They have a very short window of time in spring,” Buchheister said.

That short window helps explain why ramps draw attention from chefs, foragers and home cooks. In a heavily forested region like Sullivan County, Buchheister said, many families know places where ramps grow on old family land or wooded properties. But the season creates urgency.

“People get excited because it’s short,” Buchheister said. “It’s quick. Get them while you can. Otherwise, the deer will eat them.”

He described ramp hunting as a “race against nature,” against deer and against other people looking for the same spring ingredient.

In the kitchen, Buchheister said, ramps are valuable because nearly the whole plant can be used. The bottom can be treated like garlic, leek, scallion or onion. The leafy tops can be used like herbs, greens or scallion tops.

“They’re versatile,” Buchheister said.

Unlike garlic, he said, ramps do not have a harsh flavor. They have a slightly sweeter flavor and can be cleaned and eaten raw, pickled, blanched, turned into pesto or cooked into soup.

Buchheister also used the demo to stress responsible harvesting. Ramps are perennial, meaning they can return year after year if they are not overharvested. He said the best way to harvest them is to clip the plant above the bulb so it can grow back, or to take only part of a patch and leave the rest.

“If you pull them all, then they’re gone,” Buchheister said.

That balance between excitement and restraint gave the demonstration a practical message. The bisque was not only a way to enjoy ramps, but a way to think about how a short-season wild food should be used.

Buchheister came to the Ramp Fest demo through his broader work teaching food programming locally. He said he does culinary classes with the library, including children’s programming, dinner-and-movie events and adult programs.

His approach to food education comes from a winding path. Buchheister studied theater and film before finding his way into kitchens. In college, he worked as a delivery driver for a sandwich shop until his car broke down. Unable to keep driving, he moved inside the shop.

A manager noticed he was fast, efficient and clean, and asked if he wanted to do management work.

“I wasn’t good at cooking,” Buchheister said. “But I was clean and organized.”

Later, after moving to New York City for theater work, Buchheister again found himself in restaurants. He said he started as a line cook and was soon helping manage multiple restaurants. He did not attend culinary school, but learned by watching chefs, working with them and picking up the systems behind kitchen work.

That background now shapes how he teaches. Buchheister said he once tried to teach students in a more rigid way, focusing on how to run a clean and safe kitchen. Over time, he shifted toward the parts of food that connected more naturally with his theater and film background.

Rather than only training young people to become line cooks, Buchheister said he now focuses on helping them see food as creative, practical and engaging.

He said the goal is to teach kids “how to have fun with food,” and to show that food can be “magical and scientific and healthy at the same time.”

These days, Buchheister said his work allows him to move between projects, help with different programs and stay flexible for his family. He said that suits him better than being tied to one full-time kitchen job.

At the Callicoon Depot, that flexibility placed him in front of a crowd with a pot of soup, a bundle of ramps and a lesson in how much can be drawn from a plant that appears for only a few weeks each spring.

And unlike many specialty ingredients, he said, ramps do not necessarily require a store shelf.

“They’re basically free,” Buch-heister said. “You just have to commit your time and be willing to go bogging for them.”