Chickweed Recipes: Grilled Cheese! (2024)

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What can you do with common chickweed? ›

Common Chickweed Uses

Although common chickweed is considered a pest in lawns and gardens, it is an edible plant. Its tender leaves can be readily used as a salad green or boiled as a potherb. It can be used as a famine food, especially during late winter months when it actively grows.

Eaten raw, it tastes like corn-on-the-cob, or like cornsilk. Cooked, it's more like spinach. Always chop the entire plant, except the roots, into bite-sized pieces before using it. A salad vegetable and pot herb par excellence, it's also great in sandwiches.

You can add chopped chickweed leaves to dishes like soups, egg recipes, pastas, or pizzas. It can also be blended into dips and sauces like pesto or hummus.

In the realm of folklore, Common Chickweed has quietly symbolized fidelity and love. This unassuming plant, often overlooked, has been a steadfast emblem of constancy in relationships, whispering tales of devotion through its persistent growth.

Pregnancy and breast-feeding: There is not enough reliable information about the safety of taking chickweed if you are pregnant or breast-feeding. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.

In addition to the iron it contains, even more than spinach, it contains many minerals such as vitamins A, D, C, B, calcium, potassium and zinc. It has regulatory and laxative effects on the digestive system. It also has anti-inflammatory, analgesic and sedative effects.

This weed is shade tolerant enabling it to compete well with desirable plant species like cereal and oilseed crops. The seed can accumulate toxic levels of nitrogen which can cause digestive disorders to grazing animals. This weed can also delay crop drying and tangle in harvest equipment.

Chickweed is often mistaken for a useless weed – but in fact it is an edible, medicinal and extremely useful plant in your garden.

Chickweed is a wild edible plant you can feel good about eating, as it is nonnative and most people consider it a weed. Young, tender shoots are the best to eat raw as a salad green or cooked like spinach as a potherb.

The chickweed genus is named for stars (stella = star), and the tender edible is brilliant with constellations of them in early spring. It's tiny, five-petaled flowers help identify the plant, whose leaves taste like the scent of freshly-shucked cornsilk, a flavor that is vital and versatile.

How does chickweed help to lose weight? ›

Common Chickweed (Stellaria media) is being tested for use in treating obesity. It's apparent actions are to prohibit the absorption of fats and carbohydrates into your body, by blocking certain enzymes. These then get flushed out, instead of being stored.

One popular method is to make chickweed tea. To prepare the tea, simply steep a handful of fresh chickweed leaves in hot water for about 10 minutes. This herbal infusion can be enjoyed hot or cold and is known for its soothing properties. Another way to consume chickweed is by adding it to salads or soups.

The common chickweed, or stitchwort (Stellaria media), is native to Europe but is widely naturalized. It usually grows to 45 cm (18 inches) but becomes a low-growing and spreading annual weed in mowed lawns. It can be eaten raw or cooked as a vegetable and is often added to salads.

Stellaria media Linn. is a perennial plant widely dispersed in cold and temperate regions [9]. Due to its geographical distribution, it has numerous common names, however, universally known as chickweed and about 120 species have been reported [10].

Chickweed has tender leaves and a somewhat stringy stem. You can eat it raw in sandwiches or wraps, chopped into salads, or cooked like spinach. I sometimes dehydrate and powder it to add to baked goods and homemade pasta. The flavor of chickweed reminds me of fresh sprouts.

It can be found growing in dense patches, each part of the plant supporting the other to stand up right. This formation makes it easy to harvest from. Each part above-ground is edible, but we suggest snipping only the top inch or two as the stem can become stringy and too fibrous for some people's palettes.

Chickweed can be used as a replacement for herbs in herb butter or pesto. Or alternatively, it makes a delicious salad or even a green chickweed smoothie. It is mostly eaten raw but also is nice steamed as a substitute for spinach.

This weed spreads rapidly from new roots emerging from nodes on the stems. Due to this prolific reproductive cycle, this hardy weed can quickly and easily pose a threat to any lawn with the right conditions.