DANDELION ROOT TEA (both fresh & dried)

Hi there! Today's video is on how to prepare dandelion root tea. I'm going to show you two methods of how to prepare it. The first method will be using fresh dandelion roots and then I'm going to also show you how to dry the dandelion roots so that you can have dandelion root tea in the winter as well. Without further ado, let's get into it. We're going to head outside and harvest us some dandelion roots. FYI, don't use any dandelion that is a part of a yard that's been sprayed with herbicides anytime within the last two or three years. Also avoid lawns that are treated with pellet fertilizers or even spray fertilizers, but I know you already know that because you're super smart. Here are my harvested roots. Long skinny roots like this are from younger dandelions and the older roots tend to be a bit thicker and hairier. Both are perfectly good to make tea from. You'll just notice that when you're cutting them up, the older roots will have a more woody texture to them than the younger roots. Not all the roots came out in perfect form here. As you can see, some are broken off and kind of short and stubby. That's okay. They're still usable. Alright, so let's take our roots inside. You'll want to cut the root off below the bulb base of the upper dandelion. Next, take your roots over to the sink and scrub them up really well. First, I tend to scrub with my hand to get the easiest of the dirt off. You can break off the fingerlings, but don't toss them because they're still usable. Some of the roots will have this black stuff on them. Scrub that off and you'll probably need a scrubber like I do to get it off. Older roots tend to have some hairy-like roots, which are different than the fingerlings, so go ahead and pull the hairy stuff off and discard it. Here's some more of that black stuff, so I'm going to use my scrubber again to remove it. And for forked roots like this one, pull them apart so you can get the dirt out that is wedged in between the crevice there. Once you have all your roots cleaned, this part is optional, but you can soak the roots for an additional 30 to 60 minutes before moving on to the next step. Now, the pot that I'm going to be boiling the herbs in today is this traditional Chinese herb pot. It's made of ceramic, it's got a lid, and the handle and the spout are on the same side. Now, you don't need a traditional Chinese herb cooking pot like this one, but I do recommend cooking your herbs the traditional Chinese method way, and that's using either a ceramic pot, maybe you have a ceramic tea kettle, or a glass pot like this one, so long as that you have a fitted lid for the top. The reason why the Chinese traditional method does not use metal is because sometimes the chemicals inside of the herbs react with the metal in the stainless steel cooking pot, but if stainless steel is all you have, then just go ahead and use that. Now, whether you really want to invest in a Chinese traditional ceramic cooking pot like this, which they are a bit on the pricey side, or maybe you want to just invest in a less expensive glass pot like this, or a ceramic tea pot, either of them work. I'll put a link in the description below where you can get them on Amazon. So, I'm just going to take the root right out of the soaking water here, and I'm just going to chop it up into some pieces here. Nothing really small, just about like this, kind of like my thumb here, and the size that you chop it really doesn't matter. I'm going to leave the rest of these roots here because I'm going to also show you later in the video how you dry them so that you can enjoy the dandelion root tea in the winter as well, so be sure to stick around for that. Let's just continue with the fresh preparation first. All right, so this is about a half a cup of the fresh dandelion root, and there are eight tablespoons in a half of a cup. I'm going to get my pot out here, and we're going to add the water. I'm using my fresh, really clean well water here, but if you don't have access to well water, then I highly recommend to buy any of these brands of spring water that you can get from your local grocery store. They're inexpensive, and in my opinion, they're a nice quality water. Whatever you do, don't use city water. It has chlorine in it, pharmaceutical drug residues, lots of other mystery chemicals and contaminants in that, and it's just not good for you, and it'll essentially contaminate your dandelion root tea. In total, I'm going to add eight cups of water because I want to make a lot of this tea. The proportion that we're going to prepare this dandelion herb is one tablespoon to one cup of water, so since I'm adding eight cups of water, I'm going to put in this half a cup of herbs, which like I said, is eight tablespoons. Now you can't see it, but the water line is about right here. Now this eight cups, even with the lid on, is still going to boil off and simmer down for the period that we're preparing it, so the finished product will not be a full eight cups. Then just put the dandelion root in. Put the lid on. We're going to put it on the stove at medium-high heat. Bring it up to a boil. Once it's at a boil, then we're going to turn it down to low heat and simmer it. Now depending on how much water and herbs you're using, you're going to simmer the root for 20 to 40 minutes. Because I'm using a lot of water, I'm going to do the full 40 minutes. If I were just doing two cups of water and two tablespoons of herbs, then I would boil for the 20 minutes because a lot of that water is going to boil off, so you keep it at a lower cook time. Now I've got the fresh dandelion root cooking in the pot behind me, but while that's cooking, I'm going to show you also how to prepare the dandelion in dry forms so that you can enjoy the dandelion root in the winter as well. Now don't go away because once I'm done showing you how to dry it, then I'll show you the results of the fresh dandelion root tea. Also if you would, just take a second and hit that subscribe button in the bottom corner of your screen there, and if you're liking this video so far or finding it interesting, give me a thumbs up. All right, let's dry our dandelion root. I'm going to just take a few of the strands out here and I'm just going to dab the water off of them a bit. Then just like I did with the fresh root, I'm going to go ahead and just cut these in same size sectionals for this drying method. I tend to do the really big fat parts a little smaller so that they dry faster. Next you're just going to take your cut up root and you're going to put it on the dehydration tray. Now I'm just doing a really small bit here just to show you an example of how it's done. If I were truly preparing for winter, I would do a lot more, but I already have a lot of dry dandelion root that I made from last year, so I'm just going to do this little bit. I like to dry my foods and herbs at low temperature to help preserve the nutrients, so I'm going to set the temp here at 115 degrees. Roots take a bit longer than leaves and berries would, so I'm going to leave these in here for several days until the roots are completely dried and look like this. At this point you can optionally break the root pieces down even more by running them through a spin in your blender, but keep in mind the roots are really hard so it may be hard on your blender depending on the type you have. Either way, once dried you can store the roots in a glass or ceramic container or even a little plastic baggie works just fine as well. To prepare them for tea later on, follow the same directions given in this video for the fresh roots. The only difference is the dried roots are a bit less potent, so you can add a little more dried root to the water than you would with a fresh root. All right, it's been 40 minutes. Are you ready to see how this tea turned out? Let's do it. Oh, that just turned out beautiful. It has a lovely aroma to it. It's just the right color. If it were any darker, it just may be too strong. It has a lovely mild flavor to it. However, you can just sweeten it up a bit with a little raw honey, but to me I really love the mild flavor of this perfectly brewed dandelion root tea. Now, I do have a couple jars over here because I made a lot of tea. Rather than do this every single day that I wanted tea, I made a bunch so that I can put it in these jars here and then keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks. That way all I need to do is just pull it out when I'd like some dandelion root tea. And just a little FYI, let it cool fully before you put the lid on and put it in the fridge. Now, if you're interested in learning how to make more wild teas, you can check out this video right here where I show you how to harvest and make fresh rosehip tea. And then I also show you how to dry it so you can enjoy it in the winter as well. And don't forget, subscribe by hitting the little icon up here, then ding the bell to be notified each time I upload a new video. I'll see you next time. Bye.