Recipe: Dandelion Honey

Gather some dandelions on your daily walk, and make honey!

Hey!

So this is my first recipe post, and it's somewhat unusual for me. I'm not ordinarily a forager but the country is in lockdown at the moment and I'm on furlough so I'm spending a lot of time in the woods with my daughter, Tess, and we're seeing a lot of natural, fresh, free produce - quite handy when you only go to the supermarket every 2 weeks.

We've gathered the rather more normal wild garlic, which I love the smell of, and grown our own radishes and parsnip tops (we don't talk about the failed carrot tops...), this felt like we were taking a step out of the ordinary, and into WTF territory, but I'd seen a recipe, so off we go..

You can find a dandelion in pretty much any patch of grass here in the UK, and a shitload in our front garden, but we left those were they were and went out to collect ours from the woods just down the road in Bramley.

Once we had a bag full we headed back home to make the honey. It only takes 4 ingredients, and one of them comes out of the kitchen tap so it's pretty close to being a stock cupboard recipe.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup Dandelions
  • 1 Lemon
  • 1 cup Cold water
  • 1 cup Caster sugar

Method

Preparation

There's not a great deal to prepare here, just gather and wash the dandelions, then chop your lemon in half

Bring it to the boil

Throw the dandelions, water and lemon into a pan on a medium heat and warm it til it boils.

Keep it boiling for 3 minutes.

Sieve it

Sieve the mixture, you don't want any rogue flower heads in your honey. Give it a good squeeze out and then put the juices back into your pan.

Add the sugar and boil again

Add the sugar into the pan and bring the mixture to the boil. The sugar will dissolve and the mixture will start to thicken.

When you're happy with the consistency, take the pan off the heat and pour your honey into a jar, keeping the lid off until it has fully cooled.

Bear in mind that the honey will thicken further as it cools

Et voila! A jar of dandelion honey.

This tastes great smothered on a slice of toast or some cereal. It's also lovely for sweetening a ginger tea, or just eating straight out of the jar - not that I'd do that of course..

The finished product