How to Eat Clover

The clover plant is often seen as either a weed, a wild plant, or something you feed to your pet bunny. But clover can also be a nutritious food, as it's high in protein, vitamins and minerals.

You can actually eat it in a variety of ways.

One of the simplest ways is to pick the young leaves (before they get too old and tough) to add to salads. You can also make clover as a cooked green. One method for cooking clover is to wash the clover, then coat in flour and steam with a sprinkle of salt. The result is a unique and nutritious vegetable dish.

Clover blossoms can also be eaten, either munched fresh or steeped into tea. Either fresh flowers or dried flowers can be used for steeping tea. Some wild food aficionados prefer the blossoms of red clover because they are sweeter, but I've found that white clover blooms do quite well, too.

I haven't tried this personally, but apparently clover flowers can be dried and ground into a protein-rich flour. That is, flower flour, ha ha. While this seems like it would be a lot of work, it might be worth a try for someone looking for an exotic taste.

Clover grows all over the place in fields and backyards alike, so it shouldn't be too hard to find some to collect. One thing to keep in mind when gathering clover is whether the area has been sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. Since clover frequently grows in deserted lots and on lawns, this could be a concern.

Gathering wild food is a fun way to get in touch with nature and get a satisfying, unique-tasting meal at the end. And once you start, it's easy to get hooked. Soon, you'll realize that the distinction between what's "food" and what's a "weed" is really pretty arbitrary, and some of the tastiest things you can find might be growing out of a sidewalk crack.

For those looking to start eating wild foods, clover is a good one to start with because it is easy to find and easy to identify.