Chenopodium album

Chenopodium album

Chenopodium album is commonly known as Lambsquarters, and is a very well-known edible plant.

I found my source right in my own garden, growing as one of the "weeds" that most people pull out each year. I don't aggressively pull every so-called weed from my garden, but even the relatively nice ones like this suffer as collateral damage in the war against the real enemy, grass. Nevertheless, you too may have this growing along side your spinach and collards. And after trying it, you may decide to pull the spinach and let this grow instead.

Chenopodium album has vaguely triangular-shaped leaves, usually coarsely toothed, and often with a larger lobe at the base of the leaf (hastately lobed). Smaller leaves sprout from the axils of the larger leaves, with the potential to turn into branches, so if only the larger leaves are picked, it will grow more leaves. The leaves develop a whitish powdery coating, which becomes more pronounced at it ages. It does not have showy flowers, and the seeds are small and grow in clusters at the tops of the branches. Quinoa comes from a different species of Chenopodium, and these seeds are also edible, but usually considered too small to bother with. The stems become striped with purple or red, becoming fully colored as they get older.

Most sources recommend cooking the leaves, as they may contains trace amounts of saponins, a bitter soap-like substance. The young leaves are not bitter at all when young, and its widespread excellent reputation suggests that this species has very little bitter substances in it. It is the powdery coating on the leaves that makes me want to cook it more than the worries about taste or bitterness. Three to five minutes is quite sufficient boiling time.

Anyways, the taste lives up to the hype over this plant. It has a mild, pleasant flavor, and does not seem bitter to me at all. In fact, the flavor is much better and less bitter than the spinach I can buy at the store. My plants were young and had not begun to produce seed yet, so I will need to compare with older specimens to see if that makes a difference. Also the leaves hold up to boiling well, and do not become mushy. I would say that the texture leans more towards cabbage than spinach.

Lambsquarters also taste great fried, and my wife is especially fond of them cooked this way. Just heat some oil in a pan (I used coconut oil), throw in about three handfuls of Lambsquarters, and sprinkle on a little garlic salt. If you have some stronger tasting greens, you can add a small amount of those to enhance the flavor as well. I happened to have some Bittercress (Cardamine cordifolia) and Sweetroot (Osmorhiza occidentalis), so I added a little of each of those. These are stir-fried on medium heat for 5-10 minutes. The Lambsquarters seem to turn a brighter green when they first cook. I take them off when some of the leaves start to look fried. 

In the truly wild and waste places, you may come upon other species of Chenopodium. All are similarly edible, although the taste and bitterness will vary. I believe I have found C. fremontii growing near me. (Being sure of the difference requires mature fruit and a microscope.) This was much more bitter than the plants from my garden, and although boiling greatly improved the flavor, the bitterness is still detectable. It would probably be fine when combined with some other flavors and cooked as part of a larger recipe.

Arctium minus

Arctium minus

When I have tried harvesting Burdock, I found that the roots were quite woody and did not look appetizing at all. This was in May, and none of them had started sending stalks up, so I don't know if they were first or second year plants. Also these are the Lesser Burdock (Arctium minus), rather than the Greater Burdock (Arctium lappa). The Greater Burdock is larger in every way, and so its roots are larger and better than the lesser Burdock, and are sold in oriental markets as "gobo root".

Anyway, the ground was fairly rocky, so it was hard to get much root. When I tried peeling the root that I got, the root looked rather fibrous and unappetizing, but the outer part peeled away right up the stalk, revealing a central part of the shoot or stalk which looked very appetizing. This central part is similar to the core of a broccoli stalk in texture, quite smooth and crunchy. The outer part of the burdock plant peels away easily (and is reported to be bitter), leaving this core with a thin layer of fibers attacked. These fibers are not tough, and the core can be enjoyed raw, as a crunchy vegetable. It was only only very slightly bitter, and my mouth felt dryer eating some, so there must be a bit of astringency there too. After cooking, the outer layer of fibers became very soft, so I lightly scraped it to remove the rest of that and make it look cleaner. Next time, I will try cleaning the dirt off before peeling. The cooking made it softer, but did not otherwise change the taste much.

This core turns out to be the start of the stalk which grows up within a week or two. It will soon turn pithy and inedible. But before it flowers, the top foot or two of the stalk, which is still somewhat flexible, is edible. Most of the tough and fibrous outer stalk peels away easily, but there is still a layer of fibers which is difficult to remove entirely. I have eaten this core raw, and it is crunchy and good, but also slightly bitter and astringent. Cooking seems to remove most bitterness and makes the final layer of fibers easier to remove. It is tender and good tasting after boiling for 10-20 minutes. If the stalk is not young enough, it will need longer cooking, and is crunchy in a woody sort of way, still edible, but not as good tasting. If the stalk is woody or pithy, it is not good at all. The lowest parts turns pithy first, so get as much from the upper part as is edible. But if has bloomed, you are too late.

The edible section of the stem is also the thinnest section of the stem, so there amount of edible food is smaller than one would hope for from a plant that grows as large as these do. Other foragers have gotten better results from burdock than I have, but it is likely that they are working more with the Greater Burdock. Nevertheless, if I find the burdock stalks at the right stage of growth, they are easy to harvest and eat, and the plant will usually send up another stalk to replace it in a week or so.

Asclepias speciosa

Asclepias speciosa

Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) is fairly common along roadsides and in fields. It is easily recognized by the large leaves with milky juice, and the balls of alien-looking flowers. Most people appreciate it for the butterflies it attracts. But it is also a good edible plant, but different parts are edible at different times of the year, so it may take some time and experience to learn to use it effectively. My experiences below were collected over several years.

I had a milkweed plant volunteer to grow in my yard a couple years ago. Each year I have a few more. As a result, I have had the opportunity to try out the various parts as the plants mature.

They seem to propagate by rhizomes better than they do by seeds. They produce a lot of flowers, but few seed pods.

Sam Thayer gives an excellent and detailed description of Milkweed in his book, The Forager's Harvest. Technically, he is working with Asclepias syriaca, a different species, but it is very similar. A. syriaca is considered the eastern variety, and A. speciosa is the western variety. A. speciosa has larger, showier flowers, but they both have the large, wide leaves which are not found in other milkweeds. My experiences agree with Sam Thayer's report in all other respects.

Shoots, ready for cooking

Shoots

In the spring, the shoots are the first vegetable this plant gives us. As with all immature plants, accurate identification at this stage can be difficult. If you know where the plants were growing the previous year, they will also be growing there the next year, so that will reduce a lot of the guesswork. I found the shoots fairly disappointing. They were rather mushy and bland after boiling and peeling, as Sam Thayer recommended, and there was not much left after peeling. It is quite likely that the shoots I picked were already a bit too old for best eating, so I will be experimenting more with it in the future.

One problem turns out to be overcooking. Most sources recommend 20 minutes, but in my experience that is much too long. Even 10 minutes left them on the mushy side. In my tests, about 7 minutes was about right to make it tender, but still leave enough texture to enhance the experience. At that point, I would call it merely mild-flavored, rather than bland. I cannot detect any bitterness at all. These are still not as good asparagus, but few things are.

The bottom of the shoot is tougher than the top. When young enough for good picking, shoots will typically have several pairs of leaves at the top, and then a space of several inches before the next pair of leaves, which are often smaller. The shoot seems to start toughening up right around that set of leaves, so that would be a good point to break off the stem in order to get the tenderest parts. There will always be a copious amount of milky sap leaking from the broken stem. You can shake some of this off, but it dries to near-invisibility after a few minutes.

immature flower buds

Buds

I gathered some of the unopened flower buds when they were still quite small (1/4" or less). A quick wash in cold water removed any of the milky sap from where they broke from the stem. I tried them boiled or steamed for 5 minutes. I thought the boiled ones were better. They were mild with a hint of sweetness, cooked enough but not yet mushy from overcooking. The taste is similar to the shoots, but with more texture instead of being mushy. I enjoyed the flavor and texture a lot, and would definitely recommend trying it. The steamed ones were similar but were a bit firmer, probably because they had not gotten cooked as much. They also had a slightly bitter taste along with the sweetness, which the water must have helped remove from the boiled ones.

Since they are buds, it is tempting to compare them to broccoli. Broccoli is a much tougher vegetable with even smaller buds. It stands up to a lot more cooking, while still retaining much firmness. Milkweeds buds are tender, so one should be careful not to over cook them. Boiling helps remove any bitterness. And the result is not much like broccoli; it is a milder and more tender flavor.

You have to find these at the right stage of growth. One might feel a twinge of guilt by prevented the plant from producing its flowers, but the plants are perennial and regrow from the same roots each year. Also, considering how many flowers are produced compared to how few actually mature into pods, this might be the most abundant part available for eating.

Flowers

I tried a few of the flowers raw. The milkweed flower is an alien-looking thing, with an extra structure between the petals and stamens, referred to as the corona. It is an appropriate name, since it is crown-like in this species, with little spikes bending over into the center of the flower. It is the most prominent part of the flower, and it is fleshy and not bad tasting raw. Several authors have mentioned the possibility of boiling the flowers down to make a syrup, but I have not found a first person account of this yet.

Pods

The pods were the part I was most interested in trying this year. They are tenderest when about an inch to an inch-and-a-half long, but are still good to three inches. If the outside has started to get a more spiky appearance and the seeds on the inside have started to spread out, then it is going to be tough. But if the outside is merely bumpy and the seeds inside are packed tightly together, it is probably still tender enough to eat.

I boiled the pods for five to ten minutes, and found that they were mild tasting and had a good texture. There are hollow spaces inside the pod next to the seeds and between the inner and outer layers of the rind, so the texture is more like eating a pepper than a more solid fruit. The green outer part of the pod is mild tasting (not bitter at all), and the white insides are slightly sweet.

Silk

The pod has an indented seam along one side, which can easily be pulled apart to get at the insides, the seeds and silk and central supporting structure. Sam Thayer recommends using the insides from larger but still immature pods (up to three inches) to boil and mix into a mild cheesy product. At this stage, the silk should be soft and easily pulled apart, not silky or fibrous at all. I did not have enough this year to get a large amount, but the insides from a couple pods produced a pleasantly sweet mix of mushy silk and tender seeds. (Mature silk also works great as a flash tinder: it catches fire very easily but does not burn for long.)

The pods from which the silk and seeds have been removed can also be eaten, but they should not be broken before cooking. The tender ones will become mushy and the less tender ones will not get any more tender.