Fantastic Warrigal Greens

We have been growing Warrigal Greens at Peppermint Ridge for many years and we really enjoy its distinctive flavour. The plant scrambles over the ground and acts as a great ground cover to shade out weeds. If we get too many growing we feed the excess to our chickens and sheep – they love them. You can hang a bunch of them the chicken yard and they have a great time pecking and eating the leaves.

Warrigal Greens are high in nutrients, particularly Vitamin C and iron. They need to be blanched before eating as the leaves contain oxalic acid – this dissolves into the hot water. The cooked leaves can then be used as a side dish, or made into spinach pies and quiches.

I make a great pesto with them and add lots of Lemon Myrtle and Mountain Pepper. They are great as a green vegetable, after blanching melt butter over the top and a squeeze of lemon juice – goes with anything!

A cooking tip if you are using them for a specific dish is to squeeze out excess water from handfuls of them before making a cheese and spinach pie, pesto or quiche. I have added a pic of me harvesting the warrigal greens for the bush food cooking school last weekend.