When you’re thinking about food from wild plants, you might be forgiven for missing out those spiny, vicious, unpalatable-looking things called thistles. Actually, every member of the Thistles is edible if you can get past their formidable defences. Though some are tastier than others!

Are they worth the bother? Do they taste nice? What recipes can you use them in? Read on to find out.

Thistles are in the Daisy family – the Asteraceae. This includes all the plants with compound flowers. That means Yarrow, Pineapple Mayweed, Camomile, Burdock, Tansy, Mugwort and Ox Eye Daisy are all in the same family.

Compound flowers mean the central part is made of many tiny florets, not just one like many other flowers. Imagine a fly’s eye, with loads of facets. Thats what the Asteraceae flowers are like.

How to Recognise a Thistle

Ths may seem patronizing, but here’s how to recognise a thistle:

• Usually pink or purple compound flowers (though Sow Thistles are yellow!)
• Often spines on stem, flower head and leaves
• Leaves spear-shaped and long, often toothed.
• Grows from basal rosette
• Grows in open ground in sun

Thistles most often belong to either Cirsium or Carduus. This includes the Globe Artichoke, which is basically just a big thistle! Check out these Globe Artichokes below and see the similarities. They’re all one big happy family.

What can I eat from a Thistle?

In a word, most of it. Bring a knife with you though!

The stem, leaves, root and base of the flower are all edible. We’ll go through how to prepare each of these and try out some tasty recipes.

Leaves – chop off all the surrounding spines, then you are left with the midrib. This can be eaten raw or chopped up and made into thistle soup. Personally, I find leaves are not worth the hassle once you’ve cut off all the spines.

Stem – use your knife to skin down the stem, cutting off all the spines. Depending on how tough and old the thistle is, you may need to carve off the top layer of the stalk to get to the tender part inside. It’s tasty and juicy, a bit like asparagus.

Flower base (bract) – this is worth doing on thistles with big flowerheads! Pick off some immature, unopened flower heads. These will be green with no petals. Pare off the surrounding sepals (outer parts of the flower), and the immature petals.

You are left with the base of the flower, a creamy white button. This is like a mini artichoke and tastes great. You can eat these raw too and they still taste good!

Root – pull it up, clean it and cook as you would burdock or parsnip. Roasting and boiling both work.

Mediterranean Sow Thistle Salad

Sow thistle is really common in the South and Central UK. It has yellow flowers and a spineless stem, which is handy! It exudes a milky white sap when cut. This contains bitters. Bitters are very good for your digestion. They also, erm, taste bitter.

Here’s what they look like. Some sow thistles don’t have spines though. There’s several different species.

I picked one big Prickly Sow Thistle (Sonchus asper), then back at my narrowboat I cut off all the spiny leaves. This left me with about 1m of juicy green spineless stem.

I chopped this up into 1cm thick rounds, which are hollow. These taste bitter like lettuce, but could be filled with something sweet and creamy!

So I made a dressing of :

2 tbsp honey, 2 tbsp cider vinegar and half a tin of tinned mackerel in tomato sauce. I added some raisins and chopped baby plum tomatoes for extra sweetness.

Some cream cheese would have gone down a treat squirted into the middles of the pieces but I didn’t have any cheese!

I mixed the lot together and shoved it into a little ceramic boat. It was tasty! The juicy, bitter thistle stems counteracted the richness of the other ingredients.

My 8-year-old even tried some of it. Then he spat out the bits of thistle, eating the tomatoes. You can’t win em all.

My next thistle mission is to find some big flower heads so I can make some recipes with the bracts (base of the flowers). Some antipasti or on a pizza would be lovely!

Sow Thistle nutrition

What’s in sow thistle that’s good for you?

• 22% of your daily Vit B9
• 43% DV Vitamin C
• 38% DV manganese
• 36% DV iron
• 28% DV of copper

Plus many more minerals and trace nutrients. For the full lowdown, visit this site link.