Making Dandelion Capers
You don’t need to walk far to come across a dandelion. We all know it, happy yellow flower, a clock of seeds to blow and make a wish. Many of us now appreciate its bitter edible leaves for salads and pies and some of us would have tasted dandelion coffee made from its roasted roots. As far as medicine goes, the humble dandelion is high up there on the list of most appreciated medicinal plants, being an amazing cleanser. And now, here’s another gem to add to its list of many uses, the dandelion caper!
The capers most of us are familiar with are the pickled flower buds from the Mediterranean native, the caper bush, or for the plant nerds, Capparis spinosa.
In our house, we use capers quite a lot, most often as an ingredient to make our yummy three weed salsa verde. One of those three weeds is Dandelion. Diego's mum made her traditional Piedmontese Salsa verde using the leaves of this bitter and abundant plant, so we thought we'd try making our own capers utilizing this same fabulous 'weed'.
Dandelions produce a small, caper-sized flower bud early in spring. If picked small enough, dandelion buds can be made into convincing capers. To get the best texture for your dandy capers, make sure to pick only the very young, new buds. The small tight buds at the very centre of the plant, close to the ground are best but you can also use the older buds that are just starting to push off their outer leaves.
Prep: 15 minutes
Storage: At room temperature for up to 6 months
Serves: Makes approx 2 x 200ml jars
Ingredients:
We harvested about 200 dandelion buds (100 buds per jar)
½ cup water
½ cup apple cider or rice wine vinegar
2 tsp. ground sea salt
Three corner garlic flowers. These will add a garlic zing to the flavour of your capers. Perfect to add to a salsa verde.
Method
• Sterilise your jars first. See our simple method below for this.
• Trim the leaves from the bottom of your buds, either with your fingers or a sharp, small knife.
• Soak your dandelion buds in a bowl of salty water for about an hour. This will help remove any dirt or bugs.
• Pack your dandelion buds tightly into the jars, adding two or three sprigs of the three corner garlic flowers at the sides. This will not only add flavour but will be a pretty visual addition when your jars are full. Make sure you leave a gap of about 1 - 2cm from the top of the jar so they can be fully immersed in the brine.
• Combine the salt, vinegar and water to make a brine then pour over the dandelion buds making sure they are completely covered in liquid.
• Place a square of baking paper on top of the capers and use two sticks, I use broken bamboo skewers, to make a cross that sits just below the lip of the jar flat on top of the baking paper. This helps to keep your capers fully immersed so bacteria will not grow on capers exposed to trapped air.
• Let it sit for a week then taste it and add more salt if needed. Be guided by the flavour YOU like.
• Add as we do to a salsa verde or serve with salads, mezze plates, add to pasta and tartare sauces, or uses instead of an olive in a gin martini.
Sterilizing jars : You will need to sterilize your jars first by washing well with soapy water, placing in a cold oven and heating to 110’C. When the oven reaches 110 leave the jars to heat for 10minutes or until completely dry.
