Dandelion Greens (just in case you needed to know)

Ok, my second try at dandelion greens.

Dandelion Greens are called bitter greens. Boy that's not a joke. I nibbled a bit raw and whew that was rough. Like a terrible medicine. However you are supposed to be able to eat them. All the recipes I came across said to cook first in boiling salted water for around 6 minutes and that would remove some bitterness. I tried that the first time and the finished product was still too bitter for my taste. So in my co-op box this past week guess what was there. Dandelion greens!

It has been a fairly busy past 4 or 5 days since the greens were picked and I haven't had time to try them again until today for lunch. This time they were MUCH better so I will share what I did.

First they were a bit on the wilted side and still had GA clay on them so I removed the bottom stems and chopped the leaves/stems into roughly thirds. Put them in my salad spinner with the drain basket and added water for them to soak and "pep" up. I changed the water about 3 times as the dirt settled to the bottom after about 15 or so minutes each time(trick I saw on an Alton Brown show).

Then I put water into a small pot (it was a small mess of greens) and salted it VERY well (much more that I put into a bigger pot for pasta). Brought that water to a boil, added the greens, brought that back up to a rolling boil and boiled for 6 minutes.

Now during all of the primary soaking time I had minced some fresh garlic and a very small yellow onion (probably ended up with tablespoon of onion) and sauted that in some butter and bacon grease until cooked and set aside before the garlic burned.

After the greens had boiled for 6 minutes, I had lined my salad basket with a tea towel and poured the greens and water into that and then ran cold water from the sink on top of the greens to stop the cooking. Then took the tea towel and squeezed the water from the greens until they were fairly dry.

Added the dryed cooked greens to the garlic mixture and heated it on the stove for about 5 or so minutes until it looked yummy. There seemed to be some stems with no leaves after all this prep so I removed those before eating but I tasted one and it didn't taste bad so I guess you could leave them in.

Final story, the greens were very tasty, buttery and wonderful. Maybe a tinge of bitterness but not much. I really do think the water has to be extremely salty to boil the greens in first as the key.

Here's to eating well!