Foraging weeds from the garden
If you’re lucky enough to have a garden that’s become a little overgrown then it may help your grocery budget to cart some of the weeds you usually pull up through to the kitchen rather than throwing them onto the compost heap.
Seriously? Yes indeed. Many weeds are full of nutrition and can give an added dimension to your culinary repertoire. Here are a few to look out for:
Nettles
Wearing gloves, search out the youngest looking tips. They can then be blanched and added to a stir-fry or cooked and blitzed into nettle soup. If you can find some wild garlic to add to the pot then so much the better! Nettles also make a nutritious tea.
Nettle tea
Dandelion
Harvesting the young leaves before the plant flowers will make a great addition to a salad. The leaves can also be ground into a pesto or you can use either the flowers, leaves or roots to make a tea.
Here is one of the easiest ways to make dandelion tea using only the flowers:
Nasturtiums
Although not officially weeds, nasturtiums do tend to spread like them. Their peppery flowers and leaves add variety to salads and sandwiches. Even the freely generated seed pods can be pickled and eaten – although they do have an unsettling way of going pop in your mouth!
Nasturtium salad
Purslane
The simplest way to enjoy purslane is to eat it fresh and raw, any way you would spinach or watercress. Use it in salads, as greens in a sandwich, or throw it on top of soup as an alternative to fresh parsley.
Purslane can be gently cooked but overcooking will make it rather slimy.
Fresh purslane with yoghurt
Chickweed
A fabulous way of livening up a salad, chickweed’s flowers and leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. Use it in stir fries, chop and stir it through mash, or add to a pasta sauce. Go easy though as chickweed may cause stomach upset if eaten in large quantities.
Chickweed
If we have tempted you to forage weeds from your garden then be sure to do your research, wash them thoroughly, avoid any berries or mushrooms in case they’re poisonous and do not eat anything in large quantities that you have never eaten before.
