Dandelion “Coffee”
with Leonardo Coccuci,
Location: Ponderosa garden, Stolzenhagen, Germany
I am a coffee drinker – I cannot deny it. So when Leonardo came and asked if I wanted to drink Dandelion coffee (aka fake coffee) I was not jumping up and down. I approached it with a cynical coffee addicted attitude. But as soon as the smell of the roasting roots reached me, my taste buds where peaked – it smelled like dark honey and sweet bitterness!
Leonardo has been our resident permaculture gardener and plant concoction fanatic over the last year – And over the last months, he has been slowly luring everyone into the magic of this rooty brew. So we went into the garden for a how-to!
Dandelion – The plant
It is an ancient food and medicine, a companion of humans for centuries. Dandelions grow basically everywhere. In your backyard, in the forest meadow, or on the side of the road. They are all around us – we usually just notice them when they are all in bloom or are showing off their fluffy seed heads- but it’s when they are most unnoticed that we should seize the opportunity and harvest their roots. In Autumn the plant will send most of its power into the roots, making it the ideal time to harvest the roots.
The whole plant is edible like a true queen of wild herbs! incredibly healthy and versatile. The leaves can be used in salads – or generally as a nutritious edible green. Flowers can be sprinkled onto your food or even made into a Jam. And roots have in them the potential for a deliciously dark, smooth, and velvety drink: Dandelion coffee.
Dandelion has a status of being a wild herb, and very often as an obnoxious weed. But there are plenty of reasons why you should treasure their presence in your garden and even propagate them and seed them on purpose. It is a great companion plant. Dandelion has a “taproot” a root that goes straight down and can reach nutrients for shallow-rooting plants. It is also known to attract pollinating insects such as bees and apparently it even releases an ethylene gas, which helps fruit to ripen.
Dandelion comes from the French dent de lion – which means lions tooth – referring to the toothed leaves. The funny thing is that in French the herb is referred to as Pissenlit – which means to pee in bed – probably mentioning the plant’s diuretic properties!
Identifying the plant
Dandelion is a widely known plant, nevertheless, it’s important to correctly identify it. So you don’t end up with something else entirely!
Leaves: Long, toothed, and hairless. Grow directly from the rootstock – forming a rosette
The common dandelion flowerhead has about 150 to 200 yellow ray florets and no disk florets; the ray florets spread outward from the center.
Making dandelion Coffee
Depending on where you live, it is possible to harvest Dandelion roots all year. Here in Germany it only gets hard in the real winter months when the ground is frozen.
The process is simple:
- Find a spot where they grow abundantly
- Harvest a good bunch of roots (save the leaves for dinner!)
- Scrub them clean
- cut them into small equal size pieces
- dehydrate them in a dehydrator, oven, or air dry
- grind the dried roots (a coffee bean grinder is ideal)
- roast them in the oven until dark brown
- infuse it in hot water to make your beverage
- Enjoy a steaming cup of Dandelion Coffee
The harvest
So we step out of the house with a basket and a small garden spade in hand. We need to find a good spot where Dandelions like to grow. We are lucky we do not need to go very far. There is a good spot where they grow in big clusters. Make sure you pick a spot where the plants are not exposed to chemicals and you are not damaging someone’s field or garden by leaving a lot of small holes in your wake. Also, make sure you do not take every single plant in one area – rather take a few from here and a few from there- so that next year you will still have plenty of Dandelions blooming around.
With the spade, you first loosen the soil around the selected plant. Then you dig it up. It’s nice to go slow so that you don’t break the root. Dandelions have deep roots, therefore it takes some effort to be pulled out. shake and crumble most of the dirt off, separate the roots from the leaves by simply snapping it at the juncture. Then just through it into your harvest basket and up to the next plant.
We harvested about 20 to 25 plants – enough for making more or less 10 cups of dandelion Coffee.
After they are all gathered give them a really good scrub and wash – they do have a blackish skin that can be mistaken for dirt – this skin can stay on. Up it’s nice to make sure there is no hidden dirt.
Dehydrating, grinding & Roasting
Next step: Just chop them up into small pieces and dry them.
The easiest is to use a dehydrator if you have access to one. The other options are drying them at a very low temperature in the oven (5o°C ) or air dry them. If air drying it is important to make sure there is good air circulation. Dry them until they are Brittle.
We left the roots overnight in the dehydrator, and the next morning they were ready to be ground and roasted.
As soon as the roots are fully dried, we grind them. We have a small electric coffee bean grinder that does the job. However you can try it in a food processor, or if there are no machines around there is always the Mortar and Pestel – but this is tuff work.
Once it ruffly resembles a powder (imagine coarsely ground coffee ) it is ready to roast!
When you first grind the dry dandelion roots the resulting powder is a light ash color. It is only when you roast it that you get the rich dark brown that so resembles coffee.
Roasting is simple, it just takes a bit of focused attention. Just heat up the oven, spread the ground dandelion roots on a baking sheet so it forms a thin, even layer, and place it in the oven. You really have to keep an eye on it the whole time! Once it starts to brown give it a stir. Keeps stirring at short intervals until it looks evenly dark brown. You should start smelling the delicious aroma of honey and bitterness. Once it has the right amount of roasting, remove it from the oven, let it cool down, and keep it in an airtight container.
Brewing
Finally, we are ready to drink it!!
You can brew your cup of Dandelion coffee by either boiling the powder with water on the stove for a few minutes, then strain it. Or simply brew it like Tea.
One full Teaspoon is the approximate amount you want for a good size Coffee. Then you can savor it just as it is or with some frothed milk of choice (I like mine plain or with some Oat milk)
