Hop Shoot Omelet
Hop Shoot Omelet
Who doesn’t love a yummy omelet to start their day? Are you needing new ideas for your omelets? Want something all vegan, all tasty, and can also even be all home grown? Then this is an omelet for you.
It is a pretty simple, straight forward recipe, not a ton of ingredients, and lots of room to add, change, or tweak the recipe to your particular likes.
The Hops
Hops are one of the main ingredients in beer (along with water and yeast). For the purposes of making a hop shoot omelet, any variety of hops will work, and so far as I can tell there’s no taste difference between variants in hops (as far as eating them goes). At The Beer Thrillers Headquarters (or Bender Braus Brewery) we have Cascade, Chinook, Centennial, Nugget, and Saaz. We had potted Walhalla, Willamette, and Magnum. Unfortunately over the winter the potted ones didn’t survive.
Harvesting the shoots is pretty easy. March – April the hops will begin to pop up out of the ground (depending on how the weather has been, but its usually end of March to beginning of April that you’ll see them popping up). For growing the hops (for use of the hop cones) you only want a few of the vines to grow, so you need to snip and cut the remainder away, which is perfect for making our meal.
When ready to make your meal (typically the morning of), go out to your hop vines and snip off the ‘heads’ of each vine. See image below for the ‘heads’ of the vines.
Only cut about 1 – 2″ from the top of each of the vines, this is the ‘hop heads’ and is the most tender and tasty part of the hop vines / hop shoots.
A quick rinse under the water before getting them on the skillet or pan is all you really need to do, and thats a cursory rinse just to remove any debris or dirt.
Reminder – Use Only the Tender Parts
Friendly reminder – use only the most tender part of the hop vines. This will probably be only the top head of the vine, or about 1″ to 1.5″ – 2″ of the vine. Anything more than that its going to get very fibrous and chewy and not very tasty. It’ll also have tiny little prickles.
Depending on when you find them, your hop shoots may be short or just a couple inches, or very long like vines – this is why I recommend early season for the hop shoot omelets. Right around Easter time is usually the perfect time to trim and clip off the unwanted vines before the hop plants grow into a massive tangled mass. Hop shoots can be harvested at any time of the year up, but its best to do it early in the year. As long as there is tender, young growth to harvest they’re fine to eat.
Early season works best because you are already pruning the hops back naturally anyway, so its kind of a “kill two birds with one stone” kind of scenario.
Ingredients and Equipment
This is a very simple and adjustable meal. You can decide how many eggs you want, you can decide what greens, meats, etc., you want in. Herbs, spices; pretty much everything is up to you.
But here is generally what I use when I make a hop shoots omelet at home:
- As much fresh hop shoot heads as you have (or want to use)
- 4 – 6 eggs
- 1 or 2 chopped bell peppers
- 1 / 2 chopped onion
- Optional meats: 2 oz of bacon, sausage, kielbasa, or your preferred meat
- salt (sea salt or kosher salt), oregano, thyme, lemon pepper seasoning, Italian seasoning, garlic salt or powder
Serving size depends on number of eggs used; but generally serves 2 – 4 people.
Best as a breakfast, brunch, or as an appetizer before dinner.
Equipment and tools needed:
- Skillet or pan (preferably 10″ stove pan)
- Chopping boards for peppers, onions, meat
- Bowls for chopped vegetables before adding them to the pan
- container to beat the eggs in before adding them to the pan
- knives / utensils (for cutting up peppers, onion, meat, and for beating the eggs)
Instructions
- Ready the stove, heating the pan, use butter or vegetable oil, or spray to prevent sticking
- Prepare your eggs – beat them in the container until nice and fluffy
- Prepare your vegetables and meat you are adding (chop them and put them in bowls)
- Prepare your hop shoots (rinse them delicately, and keep them in a bowl)
- Saute the hop shoots, the pepper, and onion
- If you are using meat, add when necessary
- Add in the eggs, stir, twirl, and keep the eggs properly distributed about the pan
Overall cooking time should take roughly 10 – 15 minutes (depending on how you like your eggs, meat, and vegetables).
Serving
Serving size depends on the amount of eggs and vegetables you added, but typically it should serve 2 – 4. You can top it with cheese or any other spices, herbs, or flavorings you wish. One thing you do certainly need to serve it with though is a beer!
You’ve worked hard now, grab a delicious craft beer, and chow down! Enjoy!
Beer Related Food Recipe Articles
(The making of a hop shoots omelet.)
This was our first beer / food related recipe or food pairing article. We would like to do more of these in the future – so let us know what you think of it, and if you would like to see more of these kinds of articles.
Thank You For Reading
Also, we just started our Discord server. Be sure to find that here: Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server), come in and hang out with us.
Like I always say at the end of these articles — thanks for reading. We appreciate all the views and visitors! Let us know what you think of the site and the blog, and how we could improve it!
Thanks again for reading everyone. Take some time to check out the site, we greatly appreciate it. We have affiliates and sponsors with Pretzels.com and Beer Drop.com, which can save you money on their products if you are interested. Check out our articles on them. Make sure to check out our beer reviews, brewery reviews, Amy’s weekly column, book reviews, hike reviews, and so much more.
As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com
Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.
You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.
Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. As well as our brand new Tumblr page. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!
You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.
The Beer Thrillers on LinkTree can be found here: The Beer Thrillers LinkTree.
We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.
The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!
You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!
If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.
