Dandelion greens, field garlic and spicy mustard chicken

Today I got my Green Dean’s Eat the Weeds Newsletter, and it inspired me to… eat the weeds!  🙂

Washing dandelion greens

What’s most plentiful in my yard right now are dandelions and field garlic.  So that’s what I harvested.

Right now the dandelion leaves are small with only a slight, pleasant bitterness to them.  They would be great in salads at this stage.  Later they will be very bitter and will require parboiling twice to make them good.

Field garlic bulbs

Dandelion greens can pick up a lot of pine straw and trash.  The best way to wash them is to cut them free from the base, then float them in a large bowl of water.  That way you can pick out the pine straw and stray plant matter, and much of the trash sinks to the bottom of the bowl.

The field garlic bulbs clean easily with a spray of water to wash the mud off them.  Then you use the little pearly bulbs.  The green leaves are too fibrous to eat.

Field garlic bulbs ready to cook

I sautéed the garlic bulbs in grapeseed oil because I was out of olive oil until they were translucent and just starting to brown.  Then I added what looked like a massive amount of dandelion leaves, which quickly cooked down to a fraction of their size.  Then all I added was salt and a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes.

I topped them with leftover chicken breast chunks, tossed with spicy brown mustard, splenda and lemon juice.

The dandelion greens cooked up sweet, without a hint of bitterness, and a little chewy.

Not bad for an almost free meal!