Here are some tips for putting together a great winter weed salad
1. Pick clean. Winter weeds are small and it’s easy to get other plants mixed in without paying attention. It’s also a good idea to keep each kind separate so when you get to the kitchen, it’s easier to tell if you picked something you didn’t mean to.
2. No one kind of plant will be producing enough for a whole salad, so the more weeds you know, the easier it will be to get a big salad. And I think the more kinds of weeds you have, the more interesting the flavors are in the salad.
3. Little weeds can look different than when they are larger. So get to know how to identify each kind of weed when it is young and tender! Some of the ones I think are easiest to identify even when they are small – dandelion, dock, cleavers, bittercress, plantain, wild chives, and field mustard.
4. In the late winter, the eating weeds are most common in open ground and they will be close to the ground, so they can be gritty! Wash them well!
5. To really mix the flavors, cut the weeds into small pieces. I chop mine really fine! I add some non-weed things, too, but not too much! I like the weeds!