More than Burrs - Eating Burdock

Every spring and late fall, Fred digs up the roots of a few Burdock plants, which he allows to grow for eating. Asians have domesticated Burdock domestically for its culinary and health benefits, under the name of Gobo, but in our opinion, the wild plant is similar enough to the garden varieties to be worth harvesting, just as we also eat wild Parsnip. 

As with many root vegetables, Burdock roots are good eating both after the plant dies back in the fall, and also before it shoots up in the spring, with only three problems: the roots are so long that no matter how deeply you dig, you only seem to get half of the total volume of the root, the skin is so rough and dirty-looking that it's unappealing to peel, and in older roots the flesh contains so much fibre that it's difficult to chew. 

Fred with a 53 x 64 cm Burdock leaf

We have two species of Burdock, both introduced from Eurasia, Arctium minus and A. lappa. A. minus, "Lesser Burdock," credited by Wikipedia with 1.8 m height and 30 cm roots, was the only species around in the 1970s, but through the years we've tracked the regional spread of A. lappa ("Greater Burdock," wikied at 3 m tall, with a 1 m root), and have introduced some of its seeds, though we can't tell the plants apart until the greater or lesser burrs form. Last fall and early this spring the plants in our sandy garden got away from us, so we didn't harvest many roots, and now the leaves have shaded big areas of the garden, and Fred is on a campaign of cutting them back to expose soil to plant Squash, Potatoes, and other vegetables.

In the early spring the first-emerging shoots can be cooked as greens, or used fresh as a salad ingredient - but now, in May and early June, as the stems get thick and tall and begin to leaf out, we happily harvest the stems before the flowers form, while the stem centre is still full and tender, before it becomes hollow and pithy.

The thick outer layer of even the heaviest young stems peels easily with a little help from a paring knife. The inner core has a rather stringy appearance, and darkens quickly when exposed to air. I like to further peel this until the tougher fibres are removed - you can see them because they’ve turned brown. This leaves an abundance of pale tender inner stems, ranging in thickness from your thumb to your little finger, and ready for boiling. 

We steam them, or boil them in just enough water to cover, for about ten minutes. With a similar slightly sweet flavour (but not as strong) as cooked tubers of Jerusalem Artichoke, Burdock stems also have the same translucency and texture - both contain inulin, the low-glycemic starch that’s good for diabetics and popular in Keto diets. 

They are marvellously adaptable to all kinds of dishes. We cut them up and toss them into stir fry before serving, and they’re very nice used cold in bean salads. Of course, they’re great hot out of the pot with salt, butter and pepper, or mixed with any other cooked leafy green such as Kale, Chard, or Lambsquarters. 

Here is a Chicken and Burdock salad, just made today, with the addition of raw asparagus, green onions and tomatoes. I dressed it with a bit of green relish, a tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice, a tablespoon of olive oil mayonnaise, a dab of dijon mustard, and a few dashes of smoked chipotle Tabasco sauce. 

The only problem with Burdock stems is that the harvesting season is so short! However, if you know where there’s lots of Burdock that you’d rather not allow to mature into burr production, you can in a couple of hours reduce them to stem cores and pack them into the freezer to diversify your diet all year round.