Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Anybody eat dandelions?

I must be the only poor hillbilly Pa Dutchman that eats yard weeds.
I don't eat the ones from my yard, Dillonbuck is my boxer, and he waters my yard often.


There is a spring plant that grows in real clean, cold mountain cricks. It is good to eat in April, it looks a little like a green leaf lettuce. Locals call it deer tongue, or endive. We eat it with the hot bacon dressing akso.


I also like poke weed. We don't do the cooked greens thing, instead, we pick it about a foot tall, strip the leaves and cook the stems. Two or three cycles changing the water ever time to get rid of the toxins. Great with a cheese sauce. Eating a lot of it will give you the splatters

I've eaten dandelion greens. Boiled with butter and salt. Tastes alot like spinach that way to me.

I can see the similarity to spinach.

not quite the same as dandelion greens, but we have picked early season wild lettuce, salt & pepper, pour hot grease over it to wilt it, and added chopped onions and tops.

made a good early spring salad.

iin some of the seed catalogs there are varieties of tame dandelions to grow in the garden.

Try a Pa. Dutch (German) sweet/sour hot bacon dressing sometime.

If you don't have a set receipe, the secret is enough vinegar and sugar to make the flavor profile.
If not all you taste is the roux, greasy flour.

Maybe a dumb question but if I have sprayed in the past to kill these ugly ass weeds, would it be foolish to attempt to eat the new ones that come up?

They grow everywhere. Try to find someone rural that doesn’t spray or have a canine nitrogen dispenser.
They won't mind you cutting the dandelions out of their yard.
You are looking to get them in early spring, when they are 8" or so across. They get tough and bitter after awhile.

LOL this is the dumbest damn subject and I'm not even sure why I posed the question but I sure appreciate all the replies! hahaha

I remember as a young boy we picked dandelion greens to eat when we didn't have any spinach. I was told to only pick the small young leaves which would be tender.

We don't use anything on the grass in our yard, so we have dandelions.
The flowers (when they are young) are pretty OK if you batter them like an onion ring and deep fry them. We also use the young greens in a salad.

In answer to your question...............yes. No spray around our place, well, perhaps "limited" focused spray if I see any puncture vine, but that usually isn't growing where the dandy lions are.

458 mentioned fiddleheads. Yum.
dillonbuck mentioned a couple of others. Betting he's tried ramps too (those WILL clean you out!)
Someone mentioned the wild lettuce, I've eaten a couple of varieties. Get them young or they're virtually inedible.
Haven't seen mention of young nettles. Once cooked they are pretty good spring greens.

Various places I've lived have loads of wild mustards. I love those

Stuff is just starting to grow up here, gonna hafta go look for some greens soon.

Thanks for the reminder.

Geno

Don't forget the Wildwood weed. Just Google it if you don't remember.

yes, we always did wild mustard when young and just putting out.

creasy greens (creases) have been a staple for many years.

they're found naturalized & wild in the country side.

spicy, with tons of vitamin A in their leaves.

young wild lettuce is the best.

[u][/u]Ramps! You haven't experienced bad breath untill you eat ramps.

Ramp sammies,
Heavily buttered bread, ramps. Enjoy!