Dandelion Tempura

My favorite flowers are dandelions. I love how cute their little drum-shaped flowers are. I love the dragon tooth leaves. I love the puffballs they turn into when their seeds are ready to be dispersed. I love the roots that you can dry out, boil and enjoy like coffee. There’s no part of this plant that I don’t like. So, in the spring when they’re blooming and you see them everywhere, I always want to use them in as many ways as possible.

Last year I made batches and batches of dandelion tea. I blended it with different things, from lavender to cinnamon. But last year there just weren’t enough dandelions for me to do much with. This year, however, I intentionally gathered seeds and spread them throughout my yard. Growing weeds is my shtick so this year I did a little search for recipes with dandelions. 

So that I can match things with this blog I looked in Japanese to find Japanese recipes. Most of the recipes were exactly the same as the English ones like dandelion syrup and dandelion tea. But then I saw two recipes that caught my eye - dandelion tempura and dandelion sesame sauté. 

I figured I could try the saute later even after all the flowers had turned into seed heads. So I went outside and gathered as many dandelion flowers as I possibly could to try the tempura.

This is probably the simplest recipe.

Tempura is probably one of those dishes that most Americans like me are familiar with, right up there with sushi. I wouldn’t consider it the healthiest considering it’s deep-fried and therefore high in fat and full of calories.  As a little treat though, I would say this is worth it. 

First, you wanna clean off all of the flowers and make sure there’s no little bugs or anything on them. You don’t necessarily need to wash them off with water unless you gather the flowers from the roadside and then you wanna make sure you clean them to remove any chemicals from the road. I wouldn’t actually recommend gathering them from nearby roads, however, this is Japan and sometimes there’s just not a lot of places to find things growing.   

Next, you want to take a one-to-one ratio of flour to water and one egg in a bowl. I had followed the recipe online and it called for an egg and 200 mL to 200 g of flour but this made a very large batch of batter. Also, the flour was just regular all-purpose flour but there is flour sold in Japan specifically made for tempura

Heat up your frying oil to 180°C and then dip the flowers in the batter. 

Fry each flower head until the batter around it looks nice and crispy. I flipped mine over to make sure the bottom side got extra crispy, and I also fried a couple of the leaves. In my tiny frying pan I was able to do about six flowers at a time. I didn’t use even half of the flowers I had picked.  I had thought that my son would enjoy eating these so we could share some with my husband but it turns out neither of them wanted any. They were still really good and I certainly enjoyed them with a sprinkling of salt. Cute, crispy and full of vitamin C the texture was interesting. There was a nice crunch but then the flowers were extra soft.