Dandelion Green Recipe

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Hey guys, this is Heather from healthyveganrecipes.net. Today, we’re going to make a dandelion green recipe, because Phil and I are staying in his parent’s place and there are dandelions everywhere, which is actually very pretty if you can get over the fact that their dandelions.

It’s like these beautiful little yellow bits all over through the green grass. It’s been raining hard here so the grasses are really green. Anyway, I went out today and collected some dandelion greens, and if you do not have some dandelions at home, they’re starting to sell them at stores now, which is very interesting.

What I have here are quite large, they’re probably the size that you would find at the store. The larger they are, the larger the chance for them to get bitter, but the smaller ones are really nice but it gets a long time for them to pick so I got some big ones.

We’re going to make a sauce out of them, a dandelion green recipe sauce, so we’re going to blend them up with some stuff and make a sauce that I’m going to serve over some quinoa, but can use any type of grain or pasta, make a nice light pasta sauce and toss it in there with some cherry tomatoes.

You can also use it on anything else. You can thin it out and make it into a soup — dandelion green sauce. I’m going to start my sauce with some frozen peas, some fresh peas would also be fantastic. It is still spring here and the peas are not yet quite mature, so I’m using some frozen.

These are actually edamame beans, which are the fresh version of soy beans. Normally, I only used fermented soy but I haven’t put anything that talks about fresh soy beans. If anyone has some info on that, let me know, but as far as I know, most of the downsides of soy are with the dried beans.

Personally, I can digest these one pretty easily, whereas I had a hard time digesting tofu or dried soy beans. One thing to keep in mind when you’re buying soy beans is that, this one comes from China, even though all the fields around here are going to be covered with soy beans.

The ones that come from China are the ones that we eat, and China has different organic standards so I look for this one — the Canada organic standard symbol on it, because it’s imported to Canada. USDA has slightly lower organic standards than Canada, but the best one to look for is QAI, which is Quality Assurance International where they do a fantastic organic standard.

The problem with non-organic soy is that it has the potential to be genetically modified. So, I got a little bit of water at the bottom here and I’m going to put this over to the stove to cook for just about five minutes, just to get warmed up and soft.

If you want to skip ahead to the dandelion green recipe, I’ll be posting it over at healthyveganrecipes.net.

Once those peas or beans are softened for about 5 minutes, but before its totally done, I’m going to throw these dandelions in there for them to welt, and it helps reduce any toxins while also reducing the greens’ bitter taste. You can do the raw if you like, but I’m going to throw mine in, just to welt them a little.

I don’t want them to go more than that, because if you over cook them, they’ll actually become more bitter. So, there, the dandelion greens are just welted and I’m going to throw it with the peas or beans into a food processor. You can use a blender if you don have a food processor, but it won’t work quite as well and it needs more liquid if you use it.

I’m also going to throw in the water that I was cooking the peas in. I put it in the measuring cup to see how much I’m using. I’m also adding some rice milk that I made myself, you can find the recipe for this over at the website: healthyveganrecipes.net.

I’m not yet sure how much rice milk I’m going to use yet for this dandelion green recipe, but I’ll see as I started blending things up. So there is the things so far with only a quarter cup of water, what I’m going to do next is, this is actually an experimental recipe – meaning I haven’t made this before.

I’m going to zest a lemon, what I’m going to do is get the zesting tool. If you don’t have one, just pick one up because its super cheap and super useful – just peel of the zest of the lemon which I’m going to throw directly at the food processor.

So yes, I haven’t made this before and I was searching around for some flavors to add in here, and I found this lemon so I got the zest plus the juice in the food processor. I also found some chive outside that are looking lovely, so they need to go in, but my favorite accompaniment to lemon and chives is dill, so I’m going to throw the whole bag in there.

I also got some garlic chopped up here, and add them in, and then blend them again. I want to get the soy beans or peas, whatever you’re using, blend it up first to get a bit of a texture going, where everything else can blend into.

At this point, I’m going to add the rice milk until I got the consistency that i want. So, I got the lemon juice, a little bit of extra liquid here now. Dill smells so good when it’s blending up. It helps to get things down from the side before adding that rice milk.

I ended up adding about ¾ of a cup of that rice milk, and the whole thing is very finely chop-up at this point. It’s not a totally smooth sauce because of the dill and dandelion greens and the chives – none of those things are going to get chop-up perfectly smooth.

Now its time to season this, so I already got dill, lemon and chives in here and what I’m going to add next is some salt. It’s always helpful to bring flavors together, and it’s especially helpful if you’re doing something bitter foods like dandelion green recipe.

I’m also adding some nutritional yeast, because this is one of my favorite combos with the dill, the chives and the garlic – pretty excellent, pretty good. I like to put quite a bit in there, but go with whatever much you like. I’m going to finish that with a little splash of apple cider vinegar, which will help lighten this up a little bit, and cut through any of that bitterness.

It actually has a similar effect of salt in bringing flavors together, so I’m going to give this one last blend to see how it’ll taste. Alright, moment of truth, let’ see how this goes. It’s quite nice, it doesn’t quite the dill flavor I was expecting with the packet of dill that I throw in there, but it’s quite.

We might need to add a little bit of salt to bring out the flavor of the dill, so I might add a little bit of salt and give this a little more go and that’ll be good. I hope you’ll enjoy this, you can find the dandelion green recipe at healthyveganrecipe.net.

I wish you happy picking of your dandelions.