Before you add kale to a salad, you usually strip away the ribs and discard the fibrous stems.
After shopping for carrots at the farmers market, you clip off the feathery tops and toss them into the compost bin.
When picking tomatoes from your backyard, you likely ignore other sections of the plant — such as the leaves — when planning a meal.
But what if you discovered ways to include those kale ribs, carrot greens and tomato foliage in your cooking? Beyond opening up fresh recipe ideas, you’ll stretch your grocery dollars and get more value from what you buy.
Linda Ly, creator of the site Garden Betty, champions using all parts of vegetables — from stem to tip, as she puts it. She released “The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook” in 2020 and spoke with Savinly about ways to maximize your produce.
Trying Unfamiliar — but Edible — Ingredients
Not seeing items like zucchini leaves or sweet potato shoots in cookbooks or restaurant offerings leads many to assume they aren’t fit to eat, Ly explained. Consider the green fronds of carrots.
“People used to think they were toxic because nobody ever thought of eating them,” she said.
In fact, carrot tops are highly nutritious — often more so than the carrot roots themselves. Ly frequently substitutes carrot greens for parsley in soups or stir-fries and uses them to make chimichurri.
Raised in a Chinese and Vietnamese household, she was familiar with using parts of produce that don’t typically appear in American cuisine, such as pea shoots. When Ly began gardening in 2010, she had the opportunity to experiment further with edible plant parts.
“I was always staring at my zucchini plant that kept producing huge fruits, but before those arrived you have these sprawling vines that can be eight feet long with big leaves and I thought, ‘Could those be eaten?’” she remembers.
From there, it evolved into a playful challenge of “what odd thing from the garden can I eat?”
Ly makes pesto from kale stems and uses tomato leaves to deepen the taste of pasta sauce. She seasons dishes with leaves from pepper plants.
“Pepper leaves are an unexpected green to cook with because people assume they’ll be as spicy as the fruit — but they’re actually quite mild, with a flavor similar to white pepper,” she said.
Maximizing the Produce You Buy or Grow
When you consider eating something new, you might wonder whether it’s safe. Ly notes that if you bought the produce at a farmers market or grocery store, it’s probably fine to eat.
“They’re not going to stock anything that might be dangerous,” she said.
If you’re harvesting from your own plot, Ly advised that most plant parts are fair game — with a few exceptions, including berries that develop from asparagus plants and the leaves of rhubarb and potato plants (not to be confused with sweet potato foliage).
“There are surprisingly many edible things,” she said.
To get comfortable cooking and eating produce parts you’re unfamiliar with, Ly recommends starting with vegetables and fruits you normally eat raw.
“One of my go-to vegetables to cook is cucumber,” she said. “Cucumber is fantastic when cooked — it takes on a very different flavor and texture. It almost tastes like zucchini at that point.
“I also enjoy roasted radishes, which most people don’t usually think to cook. Folks commonly roast turnips, rutabaga and carrots, but they overlook radishes.”
Beginning with an ingredient you know and preparing it in a new way helps broaden your tastes, Ly said. After that, she suggests trying the leaves of vegetables that have a gentle flavor.
“If you grow zucchini at home, you can harvest the shoots — the younger, smaller leaves — and use them similarly to chard,” she said. “They have a kind of velvety feel. They’re mild and slightly nutty.”
Although many retailers remove leaves and stems from the produce they sell, you may have better access to intact vegetables at a farmers market or through a CSA. Growing your own provides even more opportunities to save money, especially if you cultivate items that would be costly to buy organic.
For novice gardeners, Ly recommends repurposing containers you already have on hand so you don’t invest a lot up front.
“Some people think they need these expensive, attractive cedar raised beds and a perfectly landscaped yard with a drip irrigation system, but … you can really grow in anything,” she said.
Nicole Dow is a senior contributor at Savinly.
