When you have a large harvest of chickweed, you don't have time to casually include it in complicated recipes or to frantically figure out how to use it up before it goes bad without getting sick of it. You want to make the most of your harvest and to actually enjoy it.
Here at Plant to Plate, we like to keep things simple! Here are some of my favorite ways to use or preserve chickweed:
- Sauté it with garlic and lemon juice, lemon balm, or lemon verbena.
- Add it to other sauté and stirfry dishes.
- Add it to egg dishes such as quiches and omelets.
- Add it to pasta, stovetop or baked.
- Add it to soups and broths.
- Add it to sandwiches.
- Add it to grilled cheese and paninis.
- Top toast, bagels, crackers, or crostini with chickweed and cream cheese or cottage cheese.
- Use it as a Base or Partial Base of an Interesting Salad. (Wondering why I capitalized those letters? Read more about Interesting Salads here!)
- Add it to other salads.
- Add it to smoothies.
- Make infused vinegar. Chickweed-infused vinegar can be used as a tasty salad dressing or dressing base.
- Make a tea. Chickweed is best suited for an infusion. The entire plant (leaves, stems, seeds, flowers, and roots) can be used in infusions and any other herbal preparations mentioned below.
- Make a tincture with the fresh leaves, meaning that you tincture the plant directly without drying it first. An herb:solvent weight ratio of 1:2 at 95% alcohol is suggested for a chickweed leaf tincture that uses fresh chickweed.
- Make a tincture with the dried leaves. For dried chickweed, the suggested herb:solvent weight ratio is 1:5 at 50% alcohol.
- Add it to pickles, both traditional pickles and quick pickles.
- Dry it to save it for later. See our How to Dry Your Herbs articles here for more information.
- Chop and freeze it.
Further Reading
Growing chickweed? Check out these quick facts like its best growing conditions, companion plants, and expected yields.
Chickweed is also featured in these articles: