Cooking hops...

[Lachy]

Okay, bear with me here guys... this is honestly not as weird as it sounds.

My three hop plants have just come out of dormancy, and are putting out runners all over the place. In order to optimise the harvest, I'm trimming all bar one of the bines from each plant so that the rhizome can pump all its hop-producing energy into the one bine.

As a result, I had a nice little bunch of hop "shoots", each about a foot long.

I had been reading on Wikipedia that hop shoots were eaten by the poor in medieval times as a sort of wild asparagus, and have since been rediscovered by chefs in Europe and are now something of a delicacy. The relevent portion of the article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hop_(plant)#Other_uses

So, taking the lengths of hop bine that I had trimmed, I steamed them for about five-ten minutes. I then stuck them on a plate, splashed over a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, some black pepper and few shavings of parmesan. The result: bloody delicious. If you like asparagus, you'll love this. Also, I thought it might be a novel side dish for a beer-themed dinner.

So... has anyone else tried this? Is anyone game to try this?

[KEG]

i would definitely be game to try that, but i have no hops growing

[drsmurto]

You should have taken the shoots, dipped them on root hormone and put them in pots.

Have you seen the price of rhizomes?

[Lachy]

True. However, the rhizomes are pretty damn chunky and could be readily divided... I think they're in their third year now. Also, they're all PoR plants. I paid seven bucks a pop for them... and in retrospect, that's about all they are worth.

Now if they were cascade or hallertau... different story entirely.

[drsmurto]

Ah, POR.

yep, i would have cooked them too

[Bizier]

[Bizier]

http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-arti ... 01859.html
http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/prod ... p-sprouts/

Sorry to drag up an oldie, but this subject came up in the Grow-Hops Yahoo group.

[Lachy]

Cheers for the article, mate.

[Bizier]

Hehe, I might try to eat some second year ones, my first year shoots were more like alfalfa sprouts.