You’ve probably walked right past it this fall: a twining vine scrambling up a fence, a hedge or the edge of a wood, hung with soft, papery green cones. Most people take it for a weed and pull it out or trample it. In parts of Europe, the young shoots of that same plant are one of the most expensive vegetables in the world, sold for as much as 1,000 euros a kilo, more than $1,000, and served in Michelin-starred restaurants. The plant is wild hops.
Yes, the same hops that flavor beer. But the treasure here isn’t the cones. It’s the tender shoots the plant sends up for just a few weeks each spring.
Why a “weed” is worth so much
In Belgium, hop shoots are nicknamed the “truffles of the North.” Their taste is lightly bitter with a nutty note, and they’re traditionally cooked quickly in butter. Their price comes from how hard they are to get. Each shoot weighs about a gram, only the top few inches are tender enough to eat, and they blend into the surrounding greenery so well that they’re hard to spot. The harvest window lasts only a few weeks in early spring, and very few growers produce them commercially, mostly in Bavaria, Belgium and Alsace. Everything has to be picked by hand.
That combination of scarcity and labor is what pushes the price into luxury territory in the handful of markets that sell them.
Why fall is the time to look
The shoots appear in spring, but right now is the easiest moment of the year to find the plant. In September and October, wild hop vines are at their most visible: long bines climbing fences, trellises and shrubs, with clusters of pale green, cone-shaped flowers that are unmistakable once you’ve seen them. The leaves are rough and deeply lobed, a little like grape leaves.
Make a note of where they grow. Hops are perennial, so the same roots will send up new shoots in the same spot next spring. That’s when to come back.
Before you go foraging
A few precautions matter:
- Only harvest where you have permission, and never from roadsides or areas that may have been sprayed.
- Be certain of your identification before eating anything wild. If in doubt, leave it.
- Take only a few shoots from each plant so it keeps growing.
- Keep dogs away from hop cones: hops are toxic to dogs and can cause a dangerous rise in body temperature, even from spent cones in a compost pile.
If you’d rather grow than forage, hops are an easy, fast-climbing vine for a sunny fence, and fall is a good season to plan where it will go, along with the other plants that go in the ground this month.
The vine you almost pulled out this fall could be next spring’s most expensive side dish. That’s the trick.
