Dandelion Marmalade Recipe
For as long as I can remember, I have always loved the taste of marmalade on a slice of warm toast. Nothing reminds me of a Sunday morning breakfast like the smell of marmalade and toast! And while I have made many jams and jellies, I have never really made my own marmalade before. I wanted to make a 'wild' version of this amazing preserve and came across a recipe that I wanted to share with you all. Dandelion marmalade replaces the citrus peel with the petals of dandelion flowers. The recipe below comes from one of my all-time favorite foraging books, Hedgerow by John Write in the River Cottage Handbook Series (number seven, I think).
The original recipe calls for 80 grams of dandelion petals. While this at first did not seem all that much to me, I soon found out that it was an astonishing amount! After 20 minutes or so of cutting dandelion petals, I had only managed to collect about 10 grams! So I decided to save myself (and you guys) the time and have halved the recipe. For those who dislike the overly pedantic measurements, you will find below, you will roughly need about half a plastic shopping bag full of dandelions to make your 40 grams of petals. Of course, this varies between how efficiently you harvest the petals from each dandelion and how large your shopping bag is!
Ingredients
40 grams (about one and a half ounces) of Dandelion petals
Juice of 1-2 lemons
375 grams (13 ounces) jam sugar - sugar with added pectin
500 milliliters (2 cups) good quality apple juice
(The moment I realized I was going to need far more dandelions!!)
Method
Add the apple juice and three-quarters of the dandelion petals into a saucepan and heat slowly until the simmering point is reached. Turn the heat off and leave to infuse overnight (cover the pan with a lid to keep bugs out!) The morning after, pour the liquid through a sieve to remove the dandelion petals. Chuck out the petals and add the juice back to the pan along with the lemon juice and once again bring slowly to the simmering point. Add the sugar and stir until fully dissolved.
Take the remaining dandelion petals and throw them into the mix and turn up the heat. After about 7 or so minutes of rapid boiling, use a cold dish or saucer to test if the setting point has been reached (pour a little bit onto the saucer and if after a minute or so you touch it and the surface wrinkle - then the setting point has been reached.) Turn the heat off, and pour into warm and sterilized jars. Cover immediately and seal.
And viola! That's pretty much it. Once the marmalade has cooled down and set, you can enjoy it on a wonderful slice of toasted bread!
Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post. This is the first time I have made one of these recipe posts so I am absolutely open to suggestions on how to make such posts better in the future. Any advice from the layout to the material would be appreciated. I hope you enjoy making this recipe as much as I did!
Photo credits
Pixabay (image 1)
All other images are mine (excuse the poor quality!)
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@bucksforaging15 that jar of finished marmalade looks real good. @my job told me about your post as I was taking pictures of dandelions. I'd I can come across 80 grams of flowers I'll try making it one day.
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Awesome, you really should. Like I said in the post, you can half it to 40 grams which would make it far easier!
Oh this is so cool!!! A friend of mine was talking about dandelion marmalade her grandma use to make in Poland, but we found out she ued about 1200 flowers in her recipe we gave up in trying to make it!
Thanks for this recipe, looks yummy
That's a whole lot of flowers!!! This recipe doesn't need nearly as much! I wonder how many pots of marmalade that would make :)
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Such a interesting recipe!
I think it is very well put together with your own photos and instructions are easy to understand.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you very much! I'm very happy to see that you enjoyed my post. I enjoyed making this type of post and will continue to share all kinds of wild food recipes as the foraging season progresses!
Great recipe, it is wonderful that you can make this. Soon there will be a DApp called recipesteem on thje blockchain ( I think that is the name) look out for it.
My favorite is guava Jam, love it with toast and cheese.
Hmm... That sounds awesome! I have never heard of that but sounds delicious! I will certainly keep an eye out for the Recipesteem DApp. Thank you for recommending it!
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*Wow - dandelion marmalade!! i bet @sagescrub would love this one, he is a HUGE fan of dandelions! I think you did a great job of this post - I love the way you started with a personal story, used really nice photos, provided the recipe - all you're missing is: what did it taste like?
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Of course! The most important part! :) It has a very lovely and sweet taste with a hint of subtle bitterness. Thank you for the feedback!
Absolutely this looks delicious! Wow.. half a plastic grocery bag! That's a LOT! Good thing dandelions are voracious flower producers :P
Wow 😮 that’s an amazing recipe. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a dandelion marmalade. But I could just imagine how scrumptious that flowers would be. So awesome of you trying and doing it and sharing. Thanks 🙏
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That's a really interesting use of dandelion flowers! I'm all about using the greens for salads, and even the flowers for wine, but I'd never heard of dandelion marmalade till just now. Thanks for the tip... we have an entire field of yellow around where we live.
Wine?? Really!? I've never heard of using dandelion flowers for making wine before. How interesting. I think I might try making that! It definitely helps to have an entire field of them, as you need quite a lot! :)