Wild Potherbs: What Potential

I've read a lot recently about different potherbs, both wild and domesticated. Potherbs are basically any leafy vegetables that can be cooked and eaten as "greens." I am a fan of Swiss chard (hence me growing it), turnip greens, and spinach prepared this way, but until lately I had never considered using plants such as dandelion greens.

However, my recent move has given me easier access to weeds like dandelions, so I decided to cook some wild potherbs. Here was my method:

I cut some leaves off of a dandelion plant and a buckhorn plantain plant.

I didn't take pictures of my cooking method, sadly, but I just sautéed the leaves with a little butter on medium-high heat. It only took a couple of minutes before they were deep green and tender.

All the leaves I cut off cooked down to one big bite of greens. They were very bitter. The taste was not totally unpleasant, but it was much too strong. The reason I don't consider this experiment much of a failure was that I think these bitter wild greens would be great when combined with milder greens, like chard or spinach. That way they would lend some different flavors without overpowering one's senses.

Have you ever incorporated wild ingredients into your cooking? What were the results?

Next post: a further advance into summer's sunrise.