Why is dandelion bitter

I say this same thing all the time! I also like purslane and plantain. Thank you for the article. Choose currency U. Dollar Euro. Enter amount. Our Books About. It is spring, eat your bitter greens. Dandelion Sautee 2 cups bunch chopped dandelion greens 2 cups chard 2 cups kale or whatever green is in your box this week 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar 1 clove minced garlic 1 tablespoon minced culinary herbs such as thyme, rosemary or chives Salt First blend the olive oil, vinegar, garlic and herbs to make a dressing.

Dandelion Leaf Tea 2 cups water 2 chopped dandelion leaves Put dandelion leaf and water into a stainless steel pot, bring to a boil, then turn off the heat. Share this:. Leave a Comment Cancel reply. Search for:. When done boiling, shock them in a bowl of ice-water and then put them on a paper towel to drain. Dandelion greens and crowns are usually tossed with other salad ingredients to take the edge off any slightly bitter leaves. As a finishing touch you can garnish the top of the salad with dandelion petals.

As summer progresses, dandelions reach maturity and many of the leaves will have a bitter edge. When that happens I bring on the bacon. This is a classic southern approach to greens. I start by frying a half pound of bacon until crisp. I drain the bacon and reserve the rendered bacon fat in the pan.

I then add six cups of dandelion greens and toss them for about three or four minutes until wilted. I plate the greens and garnish with the bacon chopped into bits and sprinkle with dried dandelion petals and serve. In most parts of North America, dandelions are plentiful for five or more months.

Authors varied greatly on how many boilings you should do. Most centered on two. I tried two. Done properly, the bitterness will be poured off with the water, leaving the wonderfully rich flavor of the dandelion greens behind. They become quite delicious. If boiled too long, the greens begin to disintegrate. But some things I was reading and hearing did not add up. I was continually reading in books and hearing from certain individuals that dandelions were not bitter if you got them early enough in the spring.

I cannot tell you how many times I tested this theory. Picking them in the early spring before the flower stalks appear is very difficult. The flower stalks appear almost at the same time as the leaves on the earliest dandelions. The early dandelions grow rapidly directly from nutrient providing taproots.

Consequently, the small emerging spring leaves are not really required to generate food for the growing flower stalk. The stalk can grow directly from the food provided by the taproot. Even young dandelions growing directly from seed were bitter. Their lower stalks, totally growing by food generated from the leaves, would not develop until later in the spring.

While working on my Ph. Many of these people were born between and Most had grown up in an era where there was no electricity, no cars, no supermarkets. They lived off canned, bagged, and bottled food they bought from the general store, whatever agricultural food they could produce or trade for, and wild foods they gathered from the surrounding area. The wild foods helped to spice up and add diversity to their diets. Dandelions were one of the most commonly eaten foods.

When I asked these people if they experienced dandelions and dandelion salads to be bitter, almost everyone interviewed said no, dandelions were not bitter. I was wondering what planet I was visiting.

Had all these farmers been replaced by alien pod people? What was I missing here? The gears in my brain now had something to work with. It was becoming more and more clear to me that anytime experienced dandelion eaters discussed flavor, it was within the context of how it was served, not the fresh plant straight from the ground. Hardly anyone actually eats dandelions that way. There are also psychological issues here that hide the fact that most people find the raw greens bitter. So even though dandelions are quite changed by the time most people are eating them, they praise the plant.

People who consume the leaves fresh hear these praises and wonder what they are missing. How could all these dandelion lovers be wrong about the flavor of such a hallowed plant? Some folks are afraid to admit that they cannot stand the flavor. Third, there are many people today that believe that bitter is good for the liver and proper digestion and that dandelions are a healing food. So they learn over time to tolerate much more bitter than the rest of us.

For many of these people bitter becomes an enjoyable flavor. They often describe dandelions as not being bitter. What they really mean is that, to them, the dandelions they eat are not so bitter that they cannot enjoy them. Enjoying bitter is not the same as something not being bitter. Dandelions are bitter because of a class of water soluble chemicals called sesquiterpenes. The key to enjoying dandelions is understanding how to work with these chemicals to minimize their impact on your taste buds.

Sesquiterpenes are part of the milky juice that runs throughout the dandelion plant. They are everywhere except for the non-green flower parts. Sesquiterpenes are less concentrated in rapidly growing leaves, hence the thinking that young leaves are not bitter. Well, in fact they are bitter, just less bitter than they could be. Here are my best theories on what increase the bitterness of dandelions. First, after the spring rains cease, the ground begins to dry.

That drying slows the growth of the leaves allowing leaf bitterness to concentrate. Areas kept relatively wet allow dandelions to continue growing rapidly all year long. Second, the more direct sunlight that bakes a leaf, the more sesquiterpenes develop, even in fast growing leaves. Plants growing in shaded areas or deep grass tend to be less bitter. The early spring sun maintains a lower arc across the sky than the summer sun. So less shaded summer leaves will be more bitter. In moist rich shaded soil, I have found optimal fresh dandelion leaves all year long.

Note that they are still bitter to most normal humans, but not unworkable. There are great differences in people regarding the sensation of bitter.