Hop Shoots - The Other Hop Crop! - 5 ways to Eat Hop Shoots
It's the Other Hop Crop and it's a top crop! What is it? Hop Shoots! Hops are worth growing just to eat their spring shoots. Hop to it -- and come into my post to get to know hop shoots and how to eat them!
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I'm writing about hop shoots because they were part of a mini-contest I hosted last week. Only two people correctly identified my mystery plant -- @michaelmcdermott and @wholesomefoods, although @sunscape was half right in identifying the older, green hop shoots, too. | ![]() |
Where Can I Get Hop Shoots?
Hop shoots are a special vegetable. You aren't likely to see them for sale in any store. Hop plants (Humulus lupulus) are grown commercially for their mature flowers called "hop cones" - an essential ingredient in brewing modern beer. I wrote a post on how to harvest, process, and store hop cones.
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Commercial growers prune their hop shoots several times in the spring, to prevent disease. But they generally don't hand pick them -- it's too expensive! They just mow the shoots off.
If you have any hop farms in your area, you may be able to get permission to harvest shoots from their land. They will have a lot of shoots coming up in the spring, because hops grow like monsters - or what some might call "invasive"!
Or you can easily grow hops yourself. I'll write more about growing hops in a future post. Because hops are perennials, they work well for permaculture-style gardening. And the vines are pretty enough to use in a home landscape, too!
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How Do I Harvest Hop Shoots?
The Earliest Shoots of Spring
Fresh hop shoots are available only in the spring. In the earliest spring, the emerging shoots are more purple. There are a lot of hop shoots! Hop plants want to spread out. They send runners underground and shoots will fill a whole area, if they aren't cut out!
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The Shoots of Later Spring
Even after removing all the early spring shoots, hop plants keep sending up more shoots. These shoots of later in the spring are more green, with more and larger leaves. I only harvest the tips of these shoots. I don't use a knife because I would probably get some of the tough, woody parts. So I just snap off the green tips. That way, I'm sure I just have the tender parts and I don't have to do as much processing in the kitchen.
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How Can I Eat Hop Shoots?
Here are 5 ways that I eat hop shoots. I will write more about how I cook hop shoots in future posts. I hope this whets your appetite for hop shoots!
1. Straight Up - Even though they can be dirty when the purple shoots are emerging from the ground, I like to snap them off and eat them right out there in the garden. They taste like mild green beans! The raw green shoots are good, too, but are more bitter, especially with open leaves.
2. Salads - Both stages of hop shoots are good raw in salads, too, along with small leaves.
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3. Sauteed - The tender shoots of early spring are easy to sautee in a little olive oil or butter. I use the most tender shoots for eating this way. It only takes a couple minutes. The green shoots of later spring are good to cook this way, too.
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4. Grilled -- This is one of my favorite ways to eat hop shoots! The grilling gives the shoots a great smoky flavor. It doesn't take long at all. I could eat these every day!
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5. Pickled -- Pickled hop shoots are so good! I'll show you how I make them in a future post. It's so easy! They would make great bar food!
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What Do You Think?
I hope you get a chance to eat hop shoots sometime! If you do eat hop shoots, I would sure like to read about it!
- Do you grow hops?
- Do you eat hop shoots?
- Have you ever seen hop shoots on a pub or restaurant menu?
- Would you eat any of my hop shoot meals?
** Haphazard Homestead **
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The early spring shoots sound especially delicious and all your fixings look amazing! What a great way to use a plant in all stages of development. Thanks for the info.
Glad you enjoyed my spring hop shoots! I hope you get to try some sometime. I'll be posting on how to cook with the bitter hop cones, too. There's a lot more to this plant than beer! :D
I'm looking forward to that post! I have never seen the actual plant for sale but keeping my eyes opened. Do you know if hops can be grown successfully from seed? It might be easier to obtain than the plant.
The only folks that really deal with hop seeds are the breeders. Growers don't want any male plants around because then the cones on the female plants won't be marketable. So what you'll find for sale are the roots. They are expensive, I think, since established plants are monsters that want to spread all over! Maybe some hop starts would make good prizes for a contest next spring! I have always got some to control! I'll put that in my calendar with a reminder!
Thanks for that info. Based on this and your other hops post, im thinking of growing some plants in pots purely for the shoots.
If you really want the shoots, they would run better in open ground. I put a lot of wood chips on my hops bed. The plants send shoots all through those wood chips. Then it's easy to harvest them in the spring. I've never tried growing them in pots, but the plants do want to run!
Were tight onsoaxe, but I do have some soace akong the side of the driveway tjsys underutilized...i may tryhrowing some there
Hops are adaptable. Good luck with them!
Very interesting I haven't seen these before! Thanks mate ! Upvoted
I think hops have been grown in a lot of places -- everywhere someone wanted to brew beer, lol. I hope you can find some to enjoy them!
Wow! Since they're toxic to dogs, I didn't know they were edible! That's cool!
Also, didn't realize you were an Oregonians too! I live near Bend! I was like, ooooh, Deschutes brewery! Huh! What a coincidence!
It's amazing how many things that we eat, dogs can't. I'm near Eugene, over on the west side. Howdy, neighbor! :D
OH right, I forget. Hahahaha.
Yay Eugene! Lemme know if you ever head over the cascades! We'll lunch it or something!
I'll do that! I don't get across too often, but every now and again. That would be fun to meet another Steemit homesteader!
These hop plants grow in my village for the "Gulpener" brewery.
The Dutch beer from Gulpen :-)
I wonder if anyone uses the spring shoots from all the hop plants in your village. I hope you get to try eating them in the spring. It's worthwhile! Maybe they will let you harvest some!
They are big plants allready. Maybe I try this next year, never heard of eating those shoots. I'm curious about how they taste.
I'll look forward to reading your taste review of them next year! You will have a reminder about them every time you drink a beer! ; )
That's funny :-)
I will keep it in mind
Maybe you have to keep drinking, just to keep reminding yourself about the hop shoots! ; )
Oh wow this is so surprising plant ! and the meals are so enticing ! ^_^
Thanks! Now you know the hop shoots. And thanks for the chance to have some mystery plants in your #fruitsandveggies challenge!
You are welcome, thank you also !![a floweryday1.png](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmeyUdSgtk2CjrmKvtrF8BxPtpy4rVy9tPbckn5f82K5VU/a%20floweryday1.png)
And I was only using hops to brew beer. Who knew That they had more uses. Thanks for the interesting article
Thanks, Tim! That neat that you are using hops for beer! These spring shoots are real food!
Thanks for the info. Hop shoots is a new one for me. I do have a wild hops plant that I transplanted from down the road. Looking forward to trying some.
How great that you have a wild hops plant! They are such an interesting plant. I think they are worth growing just for the shoots in the springtime. If you try them in the spring, I'd appreciate your taste review of them!
I love how versatile the shoots are. They look delicious in each way that you showed too. I think I would like them grilled quickly too. Thanks for letting me know about the post, you always have interesting ones. Great job!
Thanks, @sunscape! You identified the green shoots, but those first shoots of early spring do look completely different. Hops are an interesting plant. A great, fast growing vine with pretty flowers -- but real food, too! I hope you get to try some of those grilled shoots sometime! So good -- but those pickled ones are great, too!
I imagine them pickled would be wonderful, I love pickled beans so I am sure the hops would be great too.
Now you will have to grow some hops with all your other plants!
Oh heck no, that one is way to aggressive for me. lol I have plenty to handle as it is. Learned my lessons years ago and am careful about plants with underground runners... hahahaha
I had to laugh at your comment, @sunscape! I'm sure you have some tales about aggressive plants, lol. Easy to chuckle about now, but I'm sure they were work to deal with at the time!
I am still finding runners throughout my vegetable garden from a trumpet vine I planted 10 years ago and had to rip out after 2 years. Runners were 20 foot away and popping up in every direction. lol Yup, learned more than once.
Holy smokes! It's amazing how "enthusiastic" some plants can be. And to think how we have to coddle and cajole other ones, lol. Maybe you can plant the hops at your neighbors, lol -- or maybe along the edges of a vacant lot, where they can run rampant!
These are great posts - super detailed and with tons of content. I'm going to be coming back for more - resteemed this one. It's strange that the shoots don't pick up the bitter hoppy flavor - although that bodes well for my eating them as I cannot stand hops.
Glad you enjoyed my hop shoots - and thanks for the resteeem! No, the shoots don't taste have that bitter hoppy flavor at all. The leaves get more and more bitter as they grow, and the resin in the hop cones is super bitter, alright! I cook with those bitter hops, too -- but not everyone likes those flavors, for sure. But the shoots are a whole different story. Everyone I've served them has liked them! I hope you get to try them sometime!