How To Make Poke Sallet

A quick guide on how to harvest and prepare Poke Sallet, a great southern alternative to Spinach. Warning: this plant is toxic if not prepared properly. Please view warnings throughout the video.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• cooking
• poke
• sallet
• salad
• harvesting
• southerngreens
• howto

[Darthbelal]

We'd make a good team, as I eat the stems, which are like asparagus and you eat the leaves. Between the two of us, no Poke will be wasted........

[QuixLand]

@Darthbelal ... Yes... I love the stuff... it is a little time consuming to make and all.. but well worth it. Have several friends whose wives will not mess with it.. so i make them a 'mess' every spring.. this video was just a small mess i picked around the yard. I go to a friends farm and harvest huge garbage bags full and cook and freeze it. Altho I have not tried the berries, they do not frighten me.. i know that the seeds (which are too hard to bite into) will pass 'thru' so to speak. ha

[contreeman]

gee thanks i'm starving now. where's the corn bread

[Shreelar]

Aren't you sweet! I've been fascinated by poke ever since my Grandma told me about them eating poke during the great depression, but she wouldn't teach me about poke because of the dangers, plus she acted like there was some kind of stigma about being seen collecting poke (and wild edibles). I'm guessing as families recovered from the depression, they'd quit collecting poke. So maybe it was a social reflection in their area.

[chest002]

I have researched this on Wikipedia. This plant is known to be toxic. My mother tells a story about my grand mother serving them Polk Salad. My mom says she gave her portion to the cat. She says the rest of the family got really sick after the consumption. Any food that has to be prepped to remove poisons, I dont find appealling and I would deffinitely stress that these things are toxic especially after turning red with polk berries. Eat at your own risk.

[penkatshi]

I made some about an hour ago. Fried mine with bacon grease, onions and scambled an egg in it. Good stuff!

[MsPunkiePie]

I pick poke every year...I freeze it ,and also deep fry the stalks, but I pick it up to 3 feet high.

[hawtwired]

@hawtwired - Come to think of it, another reason some people might boil it another time or two might be preference...personally I like the "bite" it has, I certainly wouldn't want someone to do it by MY method and get sick.

It's nice to see someone else enjoy this stuff...people think a person is nuts for picking this delicacy beside a busy highway, if they only knew!

[hawtwired]

We also only boil once, then fry up in the pan...guess that's cooked twice? I wonder if the toxicity varies from person to person? An aunt used to eat the berries...God only knows why...but she lived into her 90s.

I love this time of year, wild onions and poke everywhere down here in the south! Was surprised to find people in TN scared of it when I lived out there.

[centervilletn]

the younger plants are not generally toxic...once the plant gets poke berries they will make you sick...and the berries are bad news...makes a lovely purple stain...we used to paint ourselves up with them when we were kids....