Described herein are methods of recovering silver from solution to produce metallic (i.e., elemental) silver. These methods generally include a step of providing a silver-containing aqueous solution that includes cationic silver species, followed by a step of forming a reaction solution that includes an organic acid, a buffering agent, and the cationic silver species, and a step of generating a reaction product that includes metallic silver by reducing the concentration of the cationic silver species in the reaction solution. Also described herein are metallic or elemental silver produced by these methods.