Eating dandelions. (Foraging thread!)

Post Reply New Topic

So today, I picked a bunch of dandelions from my lawn (I use no weed killer) and washed them off, boiled them twice, and ate them. I remember a kid my dad bought some and we ate them raw as salad and I didn't particular like them. Occasionally they'll be in salad mixes and I'll find them tolerable but not really like them. Cooked twice boiled, though, not bad at all. Slightly more bitter than spinach. And it's cheap as dirt (literally.) Apparently dandelions have a bunch of positive health effects, too. For example, besides animal liver, dandelions have the highest amount of Vitamin A of any food. Also, (and I missed optimal time to do this last month) the flowers you can use with sugar to make a really good honey-like syrup. It takes about 500 flowers, though. So anyway, I got a big giant popcorn bowl full of washed dandelion greens now in my fridge now. I plan to put them in lots of stuff. The taste isn't my favorite, but it's tolerable after cooking, and lots of positive health effects.

I find it odd, though, that lots of "weeds" are actually just totally edible plants. When I watched TV, I'd see commercials for various herbicides, with images of dandelions wilting away upon applying it and a happy family with a nice clean lawn. I found this odd as hell as a kid, as I was like "look at these nice flowers!" But eventually becoming an adult made me see such activity as normal. But now, that I know they're a useful green, and the flowers are even good for stuff, I go "wtf" again. Lots and lots of "weeds" are edible, and we just wanna destroy them without eating them for no reason other than it messes with scenery of a perfectly green lawn or whatever. It's mind boggling.

Anyway, post here if you like dandelions and have any recipe ideas. Also post if you like foraging and can suggest any other "weeds" to eat that I can find easily.

the root of the dandelion is also edible and medicinal. I think its some type of rhizome like ginger.

A weed is just a plant with unknown potential.

What I do with dandelions is use them as a salad green in conjunction with other, less bitter greens (like romaine lettuce). Like you, I also don't put chemicals in my yard so it is safe. There is probably a bit of chemical residue from car exhaust off our street and whatever floats over from the neighbor's yard (one neighbor uses chemicals, the other doesn't) but that still makes it less chemical residue than anything from a commercial farm.

Also try clover. It's not so bitter. The little flowers are nice.

Here's a website with lots of ideas:

http://www.eattheweeds.com/foraging/


I disliked bitter tastes when I was younger but the older I get, the more palatable bitter becomes. Maybe my taste buds are just wearing out with age and getting less sensitive to strong tastes.

Since cooking lowers the bitter taste, it might work to use them in cooked recipes that call for spinach, perhaps substituting half the spinach for dandelions. I personally haven't tried this since I am currently just using them as a salad green,

So today on my foraging quest, I found about three things in the abandoned golf course near my house. One was a particular treat, a mulberry tree, bearing (right now anyway) red fruits. I might wait a week or so for it to ripen before I start trying to harvest. They're really cool trees, it's like a giant bush and a tree. Like 20 feet or so high. Totally cool.


Those are the fruits right now. Wait a bit? Also, all the blackberries and raspberries are popping up. Raspberries and black berries GALORE in that place. Still not ripe, though. Still, to me finding this mulberry tree felt like winning the lotto.

I'm still trying to find mustard greens or garlic mustard plants, too. So far the dandelions aren't fantastic tasting, but they're a decent spinach substitute if you boil the hell out of them.

Today's hike through the course area took about double the time it normally takes, as I was looking at all the plants and seeing what I could recognize as edible. It's fun doing this, though. It's like playing Fallout in real life. It's great. I'm glad in a disaster type scenario, my area I live in is a very rich area, rich in vegetation, and animals. Wild turkey and deer galore, and bass you can just plainly see in the rivers. The only problem with some of the fish in my state is due to industry, not too good to eat, even according to the state websites.

So today, I went by and about 1/10 or so of the berries were purple and I picked some. Pretty good. Like a raspberry but less tart. Sorta bland I guess. But still good. So maybe my friend will help me and bring a ladder so we can get the ones up high on the tree. Also saw some wild grapes growing on the tree, which is cool, too.

Yay food.

If you spread out sheets under it and tap the limbs with poles or shake them by hand it's easier than handpicking.We have elderberry and wild cherry,wineberries,blackberries,
raspberry,grape,pawpaw,persimmon,wild plum,wild strawberry,haws,may pops,may apples ,hickory nut,walnut ,hazel nut and tons of wild greens and mushrooms.There are some great books available,or if you can find some old timers,even better.The foxfire books are cool and have tips on foraging and old time recipes.With dandelion the young tender ones are best.
Lambsquaters is tastier and reminds me of how Swiss chard tastes, but better,and it freezes good.
After the Boston Tea Party the locals drank tea made from blackberry leaves instead of the imported English tea,lots of stuff is also good for medicine and dyes.Even the leaves of saw briers are edible,again go for young and tender.Cat tail roots,day lily flowers and roots, (but not tiger lillys).Raspberry leaf tea is good for pregnant women,they also taste good, wild rose hips make a good tea high in vitamin c,I made rose petal wine once,one gallon,yummy.
Violets were planted as potherbs by the first settlers,the flowers are edible and look beautiful candied,and the leaves as a green and blood purifier.
But do be careful you don't eat anything where chemicals have been sprayed.

The problem with the sheet idea is it's so wild and messed up there the grass is like 3 feet high, uneven surface, and it's surrounded by more shrubs and bushes.

I'm gonna go invite some friends with me to pick them, too, there's plenty to go around if we have a ladder. Seriously, mulberries are HIGH yield trees. I don't get why we don't plant them like hell. Probably easily a hundred pounds of fruit on this tree and it's not even being tended to, just growing in the wild.

I think I've identified rose hips, I'll have to check again.

THIS IS SO FUN!

Also for my garden I wish I made or could make a giant potato stand so I could grow my potatoes more vertically and get a high yield. People are growing 100lbs of potatoes in junk oil barrels. Potatoes seem to be my luckiest crop this year. Just get spudding potatoes and throw them in the ground. Done.

I'm thinking at the very least some nice mulberry pie or some jams. Hmm. So many mulberries. I think the mulberries will be gone by the time the blackberries ripen. Then by the time they're ripe, it'll be wild grape season.

http://ediblelandscaping.com/

This is a great company,they have a wonderful selection of mulberries and easy care plants that produce food and look good in the yard.The plants arrive in great shape.
I have a weeping Mulberry,tri folate orange( which is hardy here),bush cherries and an Asian persimmon that I order from them.It is also a family business which is cool.

I picked 4 cups of mulberries today with my friend, he also got around that too.

3 is enough for a pie! And I can easily spend 45 minutes picking and get that kinda yield. Oh boy. No other humans as far as we know eat from this tree, though one guy walked past us and was interested and tried one.

One theory my friend had was that since it was a golf course, the reason there's so much vegetation growing so easily there is the soils are full of nitrates. Maybe.

yuck!! !! !

Wow never thought about eating them.. sounds disgusting.

But since it's my line of work I'll give it a try sometime.. maybe disguise them with alot of other foods heheh.

I made jam with them before,it was ok but I would add some lemon zest next time to liven it up.I think they taste good,most berries that are black are not completely ripe until they turn kind of flat black and lose their shine.If you have cherry trees the birds prefer the mulberries and leave the cherries alone.Just don't park under a mulberry when it's got fruit or your car will have purple bird poos all over it.
They have a lot of juice in them so if you make a pie it would be good to add some cornstarch or flour to thicken it up or it may be runny.
Some trees have better flavor,I picked some before that were real bland.The ones in the woods here are delicious.The bland ones were growing on the bank of a pond and I wonder if all that water diluted the taste.
I have a huge grove of paw paws in the woods,one problem,you have to get there before the bears do.

Juicing would be good,or homemade wine if you drink.You would need a lot for that.And there is always the freezer.I don't think they would be good in muffins,too soggy.
If you make jam or jelly with them and it turns out runny,you can always use it as fruit syrup for pancakes or waffles.

Oooh, I found out the leaves have Chinese medicine properties, along with the fruit. Supposedly the Chinese like drying the fruit. I got a tree basically to myself, so might as well go try everything I can, my only limiting factor is possibly not having a ladder/sucking at climbing/friends. But I'll get the lower branches for sure.

So tomorrow, get some more mulberries and get enough for a pie. Yeah! Also now that they've been chilled a bit in the fridge, though mild tasting, are probably on the same level of most cheap store bought berries as far as mild flavor goes.

SO MANY BERRIES, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!

Also with the dandelions, probably gonna pick some more of those, not a favorite green but they're cheap. Also now that I found out that stuff growing everywhere near me for sure is garlic mustard, I might try integrating it in pasta. Or getting a bunch of it and drying it up and putting it in a spice container.

I'm most excited about the grapes I see growing around that mulberry tree. There's wild grape vines all around there, but very little discernable fruit atm, though. I even got a vine growing by my house, that I might have cut down most of by mistake. Now I'm ziptieing it to my fence to see if I can get it wrapping around all cool and maybe bearing some fruit. Worst case there's recipes for stuffed grape leaves, so hey, those are everywhere.