Discipline: Science & Nature
Age Range: 10+, with adult supervision
Estimated Time: 30 minutes
What You Need: access to the stove (with adult supervision); medium saucepan: stirring spoon; 3 to 4 jars with lids
Ingredients for Dandelion Jelly:
3 cups packed very fresh dandelion blossoms from unsprayed plants, about 4 ounces
4 cups of water
4 cups of sugar
1 box powdered pectin to reduce the amount of sugar
2 tablespoons bottled lemon juice
1 drop yellow food coloring, optional
Sierra Nevada Journeys Educator Shares Her Experience Making Dandelion Jelly
My name is Sarah, and I work at Sierra Journeys’ Grizzly Creek Ranch as an outdoor science instructor. I’ve been loving my time in the Sierra mountains, exploring new areas, trying new activities, and making new friends. The other day I was out in our yard and I saw a patch of dandelions, which reminded me that one of my friend’s back home had told me about something called dandelion jelly. So, I looked online and after finding a couple of different recipes, (Recipe 1 and Recipe 2) I decided to try my hand at making dandelion jelly.
I recruited my friend Nolan and we went on a dandelion hunting adventure around town. We started by picking the dandelions in our yard. Then, we explored our neighborhood looking for dandelions, and ultimately we ended up at the town park, where there was an abundance of dandelions (and some fuzzy bumblebees) — success! We picked as many as we thought we might need while being sure to leave some for the bees to get pollen and nectar.
Back home with our dandelions, it was time to cut off the flower parts. We wanted to get rid of the green parts because they would make the jelly too bitter. We used a full bowl of dandelion petals. We didn’t measure, but it seemed like we had enough, so we went for it. Next, we boiled water and poured 4 cups over the petals. We let it cool, then poured it into a container so we could put it in the fridge to steep overnight. This made dandelion tea, the base for the dandelion jelly.
We strained the dandelions out of the dandelion tea so that we were left with just the liquid. Squishing the flowers helped get all the liquid out. We were supposed to have 4 cups of liquid, but ours only turned out to be about 3 ½ cups, so we added an extra half cup of water to get to 4 cups. We heated the liquid over medium heat and added four cups of sugar. If I made this again, I think I might try to use a little less sugar; our end result tasted a little too sweet for my liking. We brought it to a boil and let it simmer for a few minutes before taking it off the heat. The recipe called for pectin, but our grocery store didn’t have any available, so we used gelatin instead. Pectin is typically used to make jam and jelly and creates a less solid product that gelatin, which is used to make geletin. I would really like to try this again sometime with pectin and see how it turns out differently. If you were using pectin, you would add it with the sugar, but gelatin needs to be added later, so we let the liquid cool before adding two packets of gelatin powder. Once we had stirred in the gelatin and it was fully dissolved, we filled three jars, put lids on, and stuck them in the fridge.
The next morning when we opened the jars, we had jelly. Well, the consistency was more like gelatin (likely because we had to use gelatin instead of pectin), but it still tasted good and that’s what matters. I’m looking forward to trying this again and making some adjustments to the recipe.
Are there any edible plants like dandelions in your area? See if you can find any interesting recipes using the plants in your neighborhood.
Sources:
Homestead Acres. 2020. How To Make Dandelion Jelly. [online] Available at: <https://www.homestead-acres.com/how-to-make-dandelion-jelly/> [Accessed 1 May 2020].
Serena Ball, R., 2020. [online] Teaspoonofspice.com. Available at: <https://teaspoonofspice.com/make-dandelion-jelly/> [Accessed 1 May 2020].