Pokeweed is one of my favorite wild greens. It's in my top 3 for summer, and in my top 5 wild greens of any time of year! Pokeweed used to be one of America's most well known wild vegetables, and was even sold in grocery stores as Poke Salet Greens. But now there is so much misunderstanding and confusion about pokeweed. My dad shows how to harvest poke greens from an older plant, break down the toxic compounds, and cook it into a delicious mess of wild greens. I give you a strategy for getting to know pokeweed and forage it yourself in the spring, summer, and even into the fall. For hundreds of years, people have lived off eating pokeweed. It's real food for regular people. One of my favorite wild greens of all time!
Pokeweed does have some toxic compounds in them, and that changes over the growing season. So it's good to pay attention to the quality of the leaves. Plants grown in the semi-shade will have the longest season, biggest leaves, and produce the most food.
Step 1: Keep the leaves fresh by soaking them in cold water.
Step 2: Then put the leaves in plenty of boiling water to remove the saponin-based toxins that are water soluble. They don't have to be in there a long time, even a couple minutes is OK. The key is to use plenty of water compared to the leaves, and don't use that water again, or for anything else.
Step 3: Rinse the leaves thoroughly. That gets rids of the water soluble compounds that were released by the blanching or parboiling.
Step 4. Cook in water that's boiling or close to it, for at least 10 minutes, to get rid of the second king of toxic compounds. Time and heat are the key factors. One way is to simmer the leaves with onions and bacon until the flavors mix and older leaves get tender. That's plenty of time. Or you can just boil the leaves, alone, in a second pot of water. Then drain and cook with eggs, like the recipe on the back of the canned poke salet greens.
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Pokeweed - Phytolacca americana
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The books I shows are old classics, still full of good information, but no photos:
Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons
BIlly Joe Tatum's Wild Foods Cookbook and Field Guide
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Thanks to the iNaturalist photographers that put their Pokeweed photos into the public domain. You can find me on iNaturalist at hchrish200.
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My playlist on Pokeweed: • Poke Weed - The Real S...
The videos mentioned (and in the playlist):
Homesteading the Pioneer Way: • Picking a mess of polk... and • Cooking polk
OsiyoTV: • OsiyoTV Web Exclusive:...
Earth Healing: • The Many Uses of Pokeweed
Identify That Plant: • Plant portrait - Pokew...
DevaJones03: • The Herbal Series: Pok...
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My channel: Haphazard Homestead: / @haphazardhomestead
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Music: "Guts and Bourbon" by,Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Other music, "One Fine Day", "Together with You", "Tennessee Hayride", and "Walk the Dog", from KZfaq Music Library.