That is, not by themselves, pulled fresh out of the ground. The greens have a bitter taste that I personally like, but I imagine most people won't. If pulling dandelions up from the ground and eating them is your first taste of wild edible foraging, you will probably be disappointed.
Now that being said, once you add dandelion greens to a salad, they enrich and embolden the flavor.
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| Fresh dandelion greens on top of leftover corn, tomato and eggplant salad |
Harvesting dandelions has so many benefits. They're weeds, so you're not harming a species by yanking a few of them out of the ground. They're a forager's dream in that you can use multiple parts of the plant. And they're extremely healthy.
The younger leaves are less bitter and can be added raw to salads and sandwiches (wash them first!).
Unopened flower buds can be fried or boiled.
You can make wine out of the flower petals.
You can blanch the leaves for cooking (just add a little olive oil).
You can make tea from the leaves, roots, and flower petals (don't use the whole flower head).
You can make dandelion coffee out of the taproot of the plant.
For more on making tea and coffee from dandelions (and preserving any leftovers), the Forager's Harvest blog has a very helpful entry.
The health benefits: dandelions have lots of vitamin A, calcium, and potassium. They can help with weight loss, improving memory, and PMS (in tea form). Dandelion is also a diuretic. For more on the nutrition and health benefits of this miracle weed, check out the Edible Wild Food blog.
For now, I'm going to stick with eating the greens. Something to bear in mind: pick dandelion greens right before you're planning to use them, if you're eating them raw. They will begin to wilt in your hand within seconds after picking them, so it's not the kind of plant you want to pick early on your foraging walks.
