We have decided to start delving into some wild foraging.  If you know what you are looking for, places like where I live surround you with free food.  We don’t know all of the foods around us yet, but one that is particularly easy to find is Japanese Knotweed.  There aren’t a huge amount of recipes that are easy to find, but there are some for sure.  The recipe I decided to try was Knotweed Fruit Preserves, since I am also working on putting food up for the winter.

If you don’t know what Japanese Knotweed is, check out the post I did last year.  The plant is actually an invasive species that we see growing all over the side of the road.  Apparently no one knows that it is edible because the knotweed groves are huge.  Next year, I will get a better start and I should be able to make massive amounts of preserves.

The recipe is very simple.  First you harvest the stalks of knotweed before they start to branch and they become fibrous.  There is about a two week span when the stalks are perfect.  Remove the leaves and chop the stalks up into small pieces.  I added enough honey to the pieces just to coat them.

After the pieces sit in the honey for about 20 minutes to pull out the liquids, cook them up until they are soft.  At this point, the sauce is amazing with biscuits and whip cream or vanilla ice cream.  I can’t decide if it tastes like asparagus or rhubarb.  I think it depends on how you prepare it.  Good either way.

Finally, I added pectin according to the recipe on the jar and processed in the hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Here are some links to recipes:

Eat the Weeds

Eat the Invaders

Foraged Foodie

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