Dandelion tea works to stimulate appetite and aid digestion, and can be brewed from dried or fresh roots on your stovetop. If you make the herbal tea with fresh dandelion, you'll likely find no shortage of the weedy plant in your own backyard. You can drink a tea of the plant's roasted roots or leaves. This plant belongs to the daisy family and has a rosette of leaves as well as bright yellow flowers.
To make tea from it, you have to dry its leaves or roast its root first. You can also use dried dandelion, whether from your own foraged dandelions, or from roots obtained at a health food store. And the best thing is that dandelion tea has many health benefits.
Dandelion leaves are harvested in the spring while flowers and roots for tea are collected in the fall. For people who do not grow dandelion, you can buy dandelion extract in the form of tea bags from your local tea shop or online.
Regarding taste, dandelion tea has a lightly-sweet and delicate flavor. Roasted dandelion tea tends to have more intense in terms of flavor and have a deeper aroma. Because of its mild taste and aroma, you can combine this tea with teas that have bold flavors such as black tea leaves and masala chai. You can flavor or sweeten it using citrus fruits.
In this guide, we will talk more about dandelion tea benefits and how to make dandelion tea.
The Best Time to Harvest Dandelion Tea
While you harvest the young greens and unopened flowers in spring, the roots should be harvested in the fall, after frost, before the winter’s rest. Dandelion roots harvested in fall are slightly sweeter and less bitter than dandelion roots harvested in the spring. Both are helpful to your liver and bile production though.
The fall dandelion roots have a higher concentration of the prebiotic inulin,that encourages the good microbes in your gut to bloom. Having more beneficial microbes in your gut like lactobacillus, improves your immune function, helps you think more clearly, protects you from bad microbes like staph, and strep, and even helps you maintain a healthy weight.
I like to harvest dandelion tea in the fall because it’s easier to pull the root out, when the soil is light, after the vegetable harvest is finished. After the winter snow and the early spring thaw, the roots are more committed to their place in the soil and tend to break off when pulled.
Benefits of Dandelion Tea
- Reduces water weight
- Promote Liver Health
- Can Act As a Natural Coffee Substitute
- Dandelion Tea May Soothe Digestive Ailments
- Have Future Anti-Cancer
- Help Prevent Urinary Tract Infections
How to Make Dandelion Root and Leaf Tea
Perhaps one of the most important facts about dandelion tea is that it’s easy to find and make. Just make sure the plants have not been treated with any chemicals before harvesting them.
Ingredients
Dandelion Leaf Tea
- 1 tsp dandelion leaves (dried)
- 1 cup water (boiling hot)
Dandelion Root Tea
- 1 tbsp dandelion root (dried and coarsely chopped)
- 2 cups water (filtered)
Instructions
Flowers and Leaves
Wash, then let steep in hot water for 15-20 minutes.
Roots
Wash very thoroughly, chop into fine pieces, and heat on high in an oven for about two hours. Steep 1-2 teaspoons in hot water for about 10 minutes.
You may choose to add honey, maple syrup, vanilla extract, cinnamon, ginger, or any other taste-enhancer to please your taste-buds.
If you'd like to have a creamy frothy dandelion root tea, you may use one more ingredient, that is butter. Once you strain the tea, pour it in a blender and blend it with 1 tablespoon of butter. Remember to release the steam from the blender by opening the lid in intervals or to keep the lid partially open. This tea will taste better if you use roasted dandelion root instead of raw dandelion root.
Harvest the plants when they are young, preferably. After cleaning and preparing the plant, pour hot water over the top of greens or roasted and ground roots, steep, strain, and enjoy!
