An experimental batch of Prickly Lettuce decoction.
Yeah, I know…you’re probably getting sick of me posting about the stuff…especially if you’re in our FB group, Gawler Kitchen Herbalists which you’re welcome to join if you’re not a part of it. I post a lot more chatty and spontaneous kind of stuff there, some of which gets extended into full posts and pages in the kitchen herbalsim section of this website.
Even though the constituents of Prickly Lettuce extract well enough in water for our kitchen herbalist purposes, I thought I’d try another decocting technique where you soak dried plant material in strong alcohol for a day or two before decocting.
Drying the herb breaks down cell walls and strong alcohol also bursts them. Heating during the decoction process does the same, so we should get the maximum out of this batch.
Let’s see if it makes a difference…😒
Gotta keep my face away from the vapours this time 🥴
The day after…
I let it simmer until the brew was reduced by half, cooled and filtered it, then reduced it down to a goo, as explained in the recent Prickly Lettuce decoction post (check it out for details of you haven’t seen it).
What I did note was that during the process, the water got much darker, much faster than usuing water alone.
The end result had a different taste to that of the straight water decoction. It was bitter but not as rich in taste. Most folks probably wouldn’t notice the subtle differences in taste after being ‘assaulted’ by the extreme bitterness, but I’ve grown acustomed to it. Initially, I’ve found that works equally as well as the water decoction but must experiment a little more over time to see if the effect are as potent.
And no, I didn’t put my face over it 😁…
Other herb pages on Ligaya Garden
We cover a lot of ground on many herb related topics here on our website. There are whole pages devoted to different topics as well as frequent posts. Some of the links are –
