Mites in broccoli LIDLs - BEWARE!

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TL:DR: Please check your broccoli carefully before purchasing. Please let the staff know of there are tiny mites.

A few weeks ago DH (foodie) came home shopping and immediately started preparing dinner. He started chopping the broccoli, and there before him was various sizes of mites and tiny caterpillar things. We checked the other broccoli we bought, and was the same. The broccoli otherwise looked normal.

Returned to Lidls and complained, assuming it was a one off. They gave us a refund.

Ever since we check for mites before buying and purchased mite-free broccoli 2 or 3 times. They are very tiny, about the size of a pin head, brown with visible legs. Until today...more mites (not just a few either)...I told the staff but the other broccoli are still there. I feel bad for anyone buying them and not realising but I can only complain so many times and that is just 2 stores. So here I am trying to spread a word of warning.

I'm not sure if it's exclusive to Lidls so worth checking wherever you buy your broccoli from. I'm no ecologist so I don't know what these mite things are but there was enough and variety of them to make us go 🤢

Extra protein for no charge..... ! Loll!

Bugs! On plants! Never!

I can’t believe you complained to a shop about insects on vegetables!
We have an allotment and I try my hardest to clean but my DH laughs about the added protein.

I take it as a sign of few, if any, pesticides used. I usually find the most pests in organic veg for this reason and it's perfectly normal.

If infested, I tend to feed to my dogs, as I'm not able to just shrug it off and eat the ones inevitably hidden within.

Thanks all, panic over. Perhaps there is something they are doing that is less toxic and more favourable to the broccoli to lead the bugs to settle which can only be a good thing.

I wonder how hard life must be like for some, I really do!

I think it’s the only possible explanation of why a man might plunge straight into cooking dinner after shopping for the ingredients - must be a foodie!

Yes, we’ve seen this. Even though we are obviously aware that bugs will be all over veg and have previously grown veg so aren’t too far removed. It has still freaked us all out and we are on a broccoli break! 😂

I thought possibly op was linking him buying broccoli with him being a foodie

or

Fact that he’s a foodie gave him the skills to observe the mite infestation

😆

Leave it for a bit in a bowl of water and vinegar, then rinse and cook. Unless you're a vegetarian or vegan, it's just extra protein.

I only submerge my home grown organic veg.

It definitely makes the caterpillars swim out

Thanks for this

Oh Christ. I eat raw broccoli all the time. No ill effects so far thankfully 😬

Slightly off-topic, but after blackberrying with my kids in Aug / Sept, I was rinsing out the blackberries at home, spotted a little wriggly bug so submerged them for a while and was a bit horrified to see all the creatures that gradually emerged. Sadly I am very squeamish so it has put me right off - and there is no way I will eat them straight off the bush like I used to!

I've had to throw away the last two broccoli heads I had because it didn't matter how long I spent rinsing and rubbing them I couldn't get rid of all the mites stuck on them.

Oh dear I dont even wash mine

We had broccoli from Lidl yesterday that was absolutely infested with bugs, sounds very similar OP. I have seen the odd bug before but this was crawling with the things, too many to wash off. Not nice at all.

I’m not squeamish to a bug or two but the last broccoli we had from Asda I had to bin. I spotted a couple and thought nothing of it, that they will wash away but as I began chopping I realised there was about six of them crawling on my hand! Upon closer inspection there must have been dozens inside 🤢

The only answer is to shop only in Waitrose.

Their brocolli is grown in hermetically sealed, bug proof nests which are attended 24/7 by trained operatives armed with medicated bug removing tweezers.

Yes I am talking more than a mere few bugs. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I guess each to our own but if it gives you the visceral heebee jeebees, you're not going to eat or feed to a young family

This reminds me of the time I bought a huge sack of potatoes (complete with soil)

I was cooking dinner a few days later and dropped an unpeeled (fresh from the sack) potato on the floor (the one id just mopped)

Sd saw this and hit the roof-it was 'dirty' to pick it back up and start peeling it

I had to explain where bloody potatoes come from but she was still having none of it and told me I was a 'dirty cow'

I think bugs would have finished her off!

Bit of soaking will kill them off-ive done it many times when my father brought me vegetables from his allotment,it's all part of being organic

I think you're getting a hard time on here OP! I'm okay with a few tiny bugs, but I've recently had a couple of organic broccoli from the co-op which have been crawling with mites. I would usually just submerge in boiling water for 5 minutes, then rinse off and cook properly in fresh water, but the last one had large maggots and caterpillars in, which got stuck in the florets and wouldnt wash out - I drew the line there and threw it out!

Yeah, is a 'foodie' less or more likely to notice bugs in broccoli?

I'd prefer the odd bug to lashings of insecticide.

We’re not talking about the odd bug though. We’re talking loads of them!