Delicious Dahlias

With winter's frosty approach, I decided yesterday to dig up maybe five or six Dahlia plants which I grew from seed this year — or perhaps two years ago, as this is only our third year growing Dahlias and several overwintered fine in USDA zone 7 last year.  

I decided to dig up only the yellow-flowered ones for now.

Now the younger plants only had a small handful of tubers each, but I was pleasantly surprised with the volume of tubers on one of our presumably older plants, shown below.  One of the tubers was a full cubic in length!  I'm digging them up to propagate and move to more advantageous locations come spring.

In the process, I removed a few of the non-viable tubers, and decided to take them upstairs to the kitchen.  Dahlia tubers have a rich history of edibility, and since I know my soil is free from ick, I peeled a golf ball sized tuber, sliced it and took my very first bite this morning.

Wow y'all!  

I would describe the flavor as a lovely floral mix between ginger and carrot.  

The texture was also very pleasant.  Not as dense or starchy as I was expecting, but rather lighter with good moisture.  I tried frying some briefly in olive oil, but decided it tasted way better fresh and cool.  I'm excited to grow and try some more!

Okay, now that's interesting! Mix of ginger and carrot sounds lovely. I had sort of automatically assumed that the taste would be similar to sunroots since they're in the same family. Silly me, dandelions are also in the same family, and dandelion roots taste nothing like sunroots...

I might have to try growing dahlias even though our climate probably isn't the best for them. What varieties did you start with? Are there any that are even a bit frost resistant?

How cold do you get Eino? My dahlia survive outside here and I don't even mulch them. We are pretty mild over winter though, only -5 Celcius or so normally.
I keep forgetting to dig mine - having to treat them as a replant perennial would be a reminder that they are edible!

We do get a bit colder than you, down to -15 C occasionally I believe (although we still haven't spent winter on our land, so only know what the neighbours told us.) That said, at least one winter we had potatoes survive in the ground, just below the surface, so maybe dahlias will be fine if we mulch heavily?

i suspect, like their even-closer-than-sunroots cousin, yacon, dahlia roots will sweeten more if left to ‘cure’ in the same way: leave one in a sunny windowsill for a day or two, and then peel and eat.