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Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Fennel is a friend of mine. I’ve grown it every year I’ve been a gardener, and, much to my amazement when I first moved West, the plant grows wild all over California. It’s a weed. A delicious, anise-flavored weed.
Fennel bulbs can be grown all year long here, and if you let the plant get established, it will become a perennial in your garden; my fennel patch is four years old. Every summer it flowers and sets seed, and afterwards I cut it to the ground. Then, sure enough, a few weeks later, the plant begins to grow anew. By Christmas I have bulbs again.
High summer is a busy time if you are into fennel because the plant is setting seeds and is in full flower. Lots of people collect the dried seeds in late summer, but I prefer the fresh, green seeds, which are juicy and taste like anise candy. They are a powerful highlight in any dish, and unlike the dried seeds, they won’t get stuck in your teeth.
As for the flowers, flowers mean pollen. Fennel pollen. It’s a trendy ingredient now, and you can see it all over the place in high-end restaurants, especially Italian ones; fennel pollen is used a lot in Tuscany. The pollen is often frightfully expensive, although my friend Scott over at The Sausage Debauchery tells me he got a good deal from an Italian producer and is selling wild Italian fennel pollen at a lower price than I’ve ever seen online before.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
But, if you live in on the West Coast, you can gather fennel pollen yourself. There are two ways to do it, and each has advantages. The easiest way is to gather lots of fennel flower clusters and put them in a paper bag, tying the bag closed and the stalks together. You then hang this somewhere and as the flowers dry, the pollen drops into the bag.
The plus side of this method is that you don’t have too much work to do. The down side is that you get dried pollen, which is wonderful stuff… but not nearly as wonderful as fresh pollen.
You collect fresh fennel pollen by going to each flower head and shaking it into a bag, dislodging the pollen, which will be a lovely, creamy yellow.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
It’s not easy to collect a lot of fennel pollen, no matter which method you use. Each flower head will only have about a 1/4teaspoon of fennel at the most. This is from one good flower head:
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
There is a reason why fennel pollen isn’t cheap. It is easy to gather, but because each flower yields so little pollen, it can take an hour of gathering to collect an ounce. You’ll also get all sorts of creepy crawlies in the pollen, which need to be evicted before you can store it. A few seconds in the microwave kills anything too small to see.
All this work is worth it. Not only is fennel pollen beautiful to look at, it has a beguiling anise flavor that is unlike that of the rest of the plant. The pollen tastes warmer and rounder than either the seeds or the bulb.
How do you use the pollen? All sorts of ways, really. I’ve made an Italian olive oil cake with fennel pollen, used the pollen in soups and sauces, dusted it on meat and fish, and put it in a Greek fennel cookie I call Bacchus Biscuits.
After a recent pollen foraging trip — “trip” makes it sound more grandiose than it was, as wild fennel grows everywhere around here — I came home with enough to make a fennel pollen pasta dough.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
The pasta I am rolling out in the picture is a rustic Tuscan shape called pici, which are essentially fat, hand-rolled spaghetti. In nearby Umbria the same pasta is called stringozzi.
I decided to continue the fennel theme by making a fennel-tomato pasta sauce to go with the pici. The combination was divine.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
The sauce is sweet and tangy and strong, but not so strong as to mask the fennel pollen’s flavor from the pasta itself. I made this again for a couple of friends last night and they gobbled it up without a word — always a good sign when the food stops the conversation.
Summer’s not only the time to collect fennel pollen, it’s also the time all us hunters clear our freezers of last year’s game. Dove season is just a few weeks away, and cottontail rabbits are already in season, so we ned to plow through our remaining wild game before September.
Fennel matches really well with white meats like chicken, so I hauled out some pheasant breasts to make a cool summer salad. Pheasant breasts can dry out in a heartbeat, so I have a special way to cook them: I get some pheasant or chicken stock just to a strong simmer, drop the pheasant breasts in, cover the pot and turn off the heat. It is a super gentle way to cook the pheasant, and it’s foolproof — if you leave the meat in too long, the stock’s temperature is going down anyway, so it’s very forgiving.
After the meat cools, you shred it by hand and add to it chopped fennel bulb, a little hot chile, mint — and some fennel pollen and green fennel seeds. It’s a wonderful salad, and it is definitely a fennel explosion. If you don’t like anise flavor, skip this one.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
How to you use fennel? I am always looking out for new ways to eat it.
MORE on FENNEL POLLEN
- More basics on fennel pollen, from The Kitchn
- Salmon with fennel pollen, from Kalyn’s Kitchen
- Cook Eat FRET does fennel pollen dusted pork loin
- Shortbread with fennel pollen, from Not Without Salt
Buy Fennel Pollen Online:
I’m kicking myself for never bothering to collect the fennel pollen that grows wildly along the hills in Sausalito when I had the chance. There were so many tall unrelenting stalks! I’ve never tried a dish with fennel pollen, but would sure love to see what the buzz is all about.
My favorite way to prepare fennel is shaved thinly in the summers, and oven roasted in the winters.
Fennel is supposed to be a favorite of the wild pigs, and I’ve even heard some native plants ecologists cursing it because it’s not only an invasive non-native, but it tends to bring pigs into new areas.
Personally, I’ve always wondered if they’d eat enough to affect the meat quality (like deer or antelope in sage), but I seldom see much wild fennel in the areas where I pig hunt, so I haven’t found out first hand.
Thanks for reminding me to plant some dill weed seed later today. It’s the only herb that I know of that will sprout from seed in the high heat of summer. It’s popping up everywhere right now — except in the places that I want it.
Grilled fennel is a favorite…used in a warm salad or with some fish.
Raw in just about anything.
Thinly sliced and ‘pickled’ like you’d pickle red onion. Killer on a sandwich…also nice with a diver duck pate.
I wonder if I can get some ‘wild’ fennel sprouting up around here…
fennel pollen pasta? That sounds really really good. I like to cook some fennel bulb in butter and white wine, then add smoked salmon and some cream, for a simple pasta sauce.
Signor, Again we are on the same wavelength. Just made a salame with fennel pollen yesterday. It was actually an ingredient in the 16th century, Scappi used it all the time. Especially with pork. Gorgeous combo. Mangia!
I love the way you describe your adventure with fennel! I use the bulbs often since I can buy the Italian bulbs. I prepare them fresh in a salad sliced with red onion and orange segments covered with an olive oil and lemon dressing with black pepper and very little salt. I stew them, julienned, in olive oil together with 2 or 3 chopped dried tomatoes. Very interesting flavor is the result. Also, cooked bulbs (I always put lemon juice in the water to help the taste come out) sprinkled with grated parmesan and baked in the oven, is a wonderful combination.
Christine: Strike while the fennel is in bloom! And I also love thinly shaved fennel salads in summer.
Phillip: Never knew that, but it’s pretty cool. I don’t think there are enough wild pigs where the fennel is most widespread – the Bay Area – to get a “fennel hog.” But it’d be one tasty pig if we found one!
Carolina: I pickle fennel every year. I’ve never grilled it though. Will give it a go.
Lara: Do you mince the fennel fine? How does everything come together as a sauce?
Ken: You know where I live. Send me summa dat salami!
Frances: I’ve that baked fennel dish before, but I like the idea of a stewed, julienned fennel dish spiked with sun-dried tomatoes….
Ever inspired by your delicious posts, I stumbled sleepily into my back yard this morning (pre-coffee, even!) to grab some fennel seed to toss into a pasta sauce.
Ran smack-dab into a couple of gorgeous Anise Swallowtail caterpillars, who are now happily snacking fennel fronds in a giant bell jar where we can watch them turn into butterflies (and where the chickens can’t eat them). I love that the sheer abundance of fennel around here means I can share with the local wildlife and still have more than enough for myself!
Thanks again for your recipe – I’ll be making fennel pollen pasta soon, I’m sure. It sounds delicious.
Hank, we get a fair number of pigs here in the East Bay Hills, and plenty of fennel there, but I’ve been unable to find a hunting connection. The trappers put a pretty good dent on them around the state and regional parks (which cover most of the hills in my neighborhood), but I know there’s hunting to be had here.
Kinda got my curiousity spiked up now…
[...] Collect your own fennel pollen. [Hunter Angler Gardener Cook] [...]
Recently I made some tzatziki with fennel instead of dill. This went over very well.
I harvested some fennel pollen last week. Put it in a plastic bag on my spice shelf. Big mistake. A few days later I opened it up to use some and the entire stash was moldy big time!! Any advice on drying the pollen so the wonderful aroma is not degraded? I’m sure I should have used a paper bag, but do you think air-drying is the way to go? Any help in this department would be appreciated…
Brent: It has to be dried to be shelf stable. The paper bag is a good way to go. If you want it fresh, keep it in the fridge.
I wonder if it can be used on poached fish?
Nate: Fennel pollen is EXCELLENT on poached fish!
I used Golden Gourmet Pollen – Pork and Poultry Seasoning and Herbes de Provence 1880 Seasoning blend on our Christmas turkey. I ground the seasonings to a fine grind in my coffee grinder and added it to melted butter. We inserted the mixture under the skin of the turkey and rubbed the remainder on the exterior of the bird.
This was an awesome combination and everyone praised the tenderness and flavor of the turkey.
[...] Fennel is another easy one. Fennel is native to the Mediterranean, but it was brought to California by Italian immigrants a century ago and has naturalized here. It is the same fennel you get in the store, only denser and more flavorful; it will not have big, fat bulbs, though. [...]
[...] dusting of fennel pollen or powered fennel seed is also a nice touch on risotto, rice dishes and arancini. - [...]
I am growing an ornamental fennel (in the Boston area) and its just starting to flower now and I was wondering if the pollen with be the same/similar?
Since i do not have a lot of fennel, I would like to maximize the pollen so if I read you correctly I am just going to shake the pollen off but not cut the flower./?
Will the same blossom produce pollen and a few days later yield a bit more?
Lastly, will that same flower later produce seeds too? Thx!! Great article!!! sue
Sue: You won’t get much pollen from one plant. When I collect I go to dozens of plants to collect it, and I still get less than a 1/2 cup of pollen.
As for the individual flowers, they do seem to replace the pollen because the flowers will set seed.
I love this website. I learned so much from you. I have only grown bronze fennel but am now going to try the wild kind.
Thanks for the instructions for collecting the pollen. I refused to pay the price they wanted for it when I knew that there must be a way to do it myself.
Hank, do you know a way to keep fresh fennel seeds green? I found online a woman who grinds them up with sugar and keeps the fennel sugar in a jar, but no other solutions. Do they freeze well? I like the fresh so much better than the dried seeds. I let bronze fennel spread freely in my gardens… this year, quite a crop! I just used fully ripe seed heads as decor on tables at a reception featuring local foods, with small signs inviting people to try the seeds. I saw little children really enjoying them!
LOVE YOUR RECIPES – am going to try some out before the weekend is over!
Went out for a quick forage this frosty morning and scored a load of wild cabbage sprouts and some fennel seeds, still fat and soft. Have you ever cooked cabbage with fennel seeds? If so, was it good?