We like honey. Our liking for honey was certainly one of the motivators for my abortive attempt at keeping bees. That particular story can be read here. These days, any conversation around keeping European bees with Linda results in several mentions of the word ‘divorce’. Still, we like honey!
So my daughter invited us to go over to their place and go for a walk with her and the kids, and pick some dandelion flowers. It seems that there are lots of things which dandelion flowers may be used for, and one of them is to make a bee-free dandelion honey.
Collecting the Flowers
We went for a walk near their place and found that there were lots of dandelion (taraxacum officinale) flowers, and of course other ‘weeds’ out there also with yellow flowers, for example flatweed (Hypochoeris sp.) and sow thistle (sonchus sp.). While both of these weeds are edible, I don’t know what impact they would have on the flavour of the honey. We also noticed some fireweed (senecio madagascariensis) another weed which has yellow flowers but is toxic and should be avoided.
Flatweed
Sow Thistle
Fireweed
At this point I would also like to introduce the “General Rules for Harvesting Wild Herbs” for if you are harvesting plants not on your property. it is worth a read before you set off into the unknown to harvest wild bounty!
We wandered out and over a period of about an hour or so were able to harvest two cups of dandelion flowers and my daughter did the heavy lifting on making the honey –
1. She added the two cups of dandelion heads, minus the stalks into one and a half cups of water, and then added three slices of lemon. She then heated the mixture to a simmer and simmered it for 15 minutes, let it cool and left the mixture to steep overnight.
.jpg)
2. The next morning she filtered out the flowers and lemon using a tea towel and then added a ratio of 1:1 sugar by weight to the filtrate in a saucepan.
3. She then boiled the sugar and dandelion extract up for a period 30 minutes or until the mixture achieves a thick, honey like consistency, bearing in mind that it will thicken up some as it cools.
So how did it taste? Well, my expectations were not high, I assumed the result would be a weird tasting sugar solution, but in reality it tasted like…….. honey! It had sweetness and viscosity from the sugar, but also floral notes from the dandelion flowers. If I had been given some in a blind taste testing I don’t think I could have picked it from bee-style honey.
