In this video, I show you three ways that I have enjoyed dandelion flowers - deep-fried! I know that I shouldn't be eating deep-fried food all that often. But there's no getting around it -- deep-fried dandelion flowers are good. So I try to limit eating them this way, to the peak dandelion flower season. The rest of the time, I eat dandelion flowers in healthier ways, like in salads, omelettes, and more salads.
To pick the dandelion flowers, I look for big flowers that are fully open, in their prime. I could just pull their heads off by hand, but I find it goes a lot faster to just touch their stems with a sharp knife.
I can tell, for sure, that there are real dandelions and not one of the look-alikes that I'll show in future videos. Real dandelions can have a bunch of flowers, but each flower is on their own stem, that comes out of the center of the base of the plant. Real dandelions only have one flower on each stem, and that stem is hollow. It's easiest to cut the flower heads off and then clean them up back in the kitchen.
I let the flowers sit awhile to let any insects of spiders wander off on their own. I take off the sepals, or the little green fringe under the flowers, because it's bitter. If a flower falls apart while I'm messing with it, I just set it aside to use the petals separately. This seems like it might be tedious work, but it goes pretty quickly, and I shouldn't be eating that many deep-fried dandelion flowers, anyway.
Here some the deep fry! I just mix an egg, buttermilk, and some flour until it's thin enough to dip the dandelion flowers. I put the dipped flowers in a cast iron skillet with an inch or two of hot cooking oil, like sunflowers or vegetable oil.The oil is hot, but not smoking hot. I let the fried flowers sit on a towel or paper towel to let them drain a bit.
For the second way, I go back to the thick batter I abandoned earlier and mix in the loose flower petals I had abandoned, too. I mix them both to make a dandelion flower fritter. I cook them in the cast iron skillet and hot oil, just the same way as before, although it takes longer than those little flowers - they cooked fast!
The third way gives the dandelion flowers a completely different flavor! They aren't donuts - they have a great mushroom flavor, it's amazing! The batter is a thin flour and water mixture, like a tempura batter. I use a real deep fryer. In the deep fryer, the dandelions cook more evenly and with the thin batter, the flavor of the dandelions comes through a lot more.
The deep fryers are nice because you an set the oil to a constant temperature - I think I used 300 to 350 degrees for these flowers. I put the cooked flowers on a towel or paper towel, the same way as before. Dandelions flowers cooked this way are really good! And they go perfectly well with soup or chili, and a good beer.
But don't forget that dandelion flowers are healthier as part of a good salad made from weeds or as part of a wild weed omelette.
I hope you get to enjoy dandelion flowers one way or another sometime soon.
Here's another video on eating dandelions: • Cooking Sweet and Sour...
My playlist on foraging for wild foods: • Foraging Wild Edibles:...
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Music: "Corncob" by, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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