Tempura fried yucca flowers

[CouesWhitetail]

The soaptree yuccas are flowering now in southern AZ and I decided to pick some flowers the other day on the way home from the Huachucas. I have eaten the flowers raw in the past and they are a bit like cabbage, perhaps more bitter. So I wanted to try something new with them and saw that some people recommend dipping the petals in tempura batter and frying them.

 

So that's what I did. Some people suggest you should eat only the petals of the flower because some people find they get a scratchy feeling in their throat if they eat the flower reproductive parts (probably due to allergic reaction to the pollen).

 

Anyway, I separated the petals off the flowers, rinsed them off and then dipped them in tempura batter and fried them. The first batch I did as individual petals and I don't recommend doing them this way for a couple reasons. One is that it's labor intensive and two is that you lose the flavor of the petals. So I got smarter and tried dipping large groups of petals together so that there was more petal per batter ratio. It worked pretty well, but the petal flavor is still very subtle and if you really want to taste them, you might try some raw in your salad. Other people online suggested treating them like artichoke hearts and marinating them in oil and then putting in salads.

 

I think next time I might try adding some curry to the tempura batter and see how that is.

 

 

pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

pic of single petals after frying

 

pic of clusters of petals after frying, definitely prefer clusters of petals.

 

 

[camoremi]

Cool idea

[Hyperwrx]

That terrain in the background screams grey fox and bobcat.

[6ANut]

I will try anything once, looks great.

[Guest oneshot]

NICE!!! Amanda, now I have something else to try out...

[Guest oneshot]

I found some yucca flowers, they were all dried out, but I think they will still work well finely crushed and used to spice a light cream sauce...