My friend Kimberly Gallagher mentioned she is trying to do one new thing with her favorite plants this year. That seemed like a great idea to me, and so in that spirit I tried pickled dandelion buds.
Recently I harvested whole dandelion plants from a local farm so that I could use the roots (for beverages) and the leaves for pesto. Once home I realized that although at first glance the plants were not in flower, hiding in the baselette of the dandelions were lots and lots of unopened buds... Hmmm, I thought, haven't I heard you could pickle these?
Luckily google came to my aid and I got this recipe from the folks at:
http://www.goodnaturedearthling.com/recipes.htm
I started by separating the flower buds from the stems. I just took the ones that were smaller and di
dn't have a lot of formed bracts. (Although some I just removed the bracts.) I ended up with a decent amount. When selecting your buds, you definitely want to make sure that the flower buds are close tight and have never been opened before.I then chopped up some onion, garlic, and ginger and put all of that in a mason jar. I filled the mason jar about a 1/3 of the way with tamari and the rest of the way with apple cider vinegar. I'll wait a couple weeks before sampling.
Has anyone else used the unopened buds before? I've sampled them before while out foraging, but this is my first recipe. I am excited to see how it turns out.
