Jerusalem Artichoke - Friend or Foe?
 

Sauteed some this evening.

Absolutely delicious!

The price levied for this glorious indulgence is, alas, a high one.

And they should never, ever feature as part of a romantic supper menu. (Not unless your personal tastes are of the kind too embarrassing to ever admit to on FT)

I've just read that a shot of cider vinegar (taken as a chaser??) helps with the rather extreme after effects.

Is this true? If so, does anyone know why?

They taste sooo good and are pretty inexpensive right now.

Any tips?

I too have enjoyed them -- only had the opportunity once, it was in a baked assortment of parsnips/potatoes/yams/carrots (brits like their root vegs), but I remember they were very nice, like crunchy potatoes.

see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke

It hardly touches on the 'Foe' part of this tuber (although it does include an excellent quote)

------from wikipedia------
The inulin is not well digested by some people, leading to the misconception that sunchokes are not edible or an assumption that they cause flatulence and gastric pain. Gerard's Herbal, printed in 1621, quotes the English planter John Goodyer on Jerusalem artichokes:
"which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men."
-----------------------------

The 'assumption' (which the wikipedia article almost poo-poos excuse the pun!) is pretty well founded. Everyone I know who's had them has the same experience. Thankfully, I've only eaten them with family, friends and people I'm intimate enough with to be able to weather the subsequent storm. (Counting on my fingers, that's 11 out of 11 people I can provide personal testimony for) All of us have eaten them with no prior assumptions whatsoever - the result, initially, being a surprise to one and all.

I completely agree on the side-effects. Dear god! :eek:

Not everybody has this problem (not me, not my husband, not my two children). The issue is a combination of inulin (a dietary fiber which is incorrectly characterized by Wikipedia in your quote below as "not well digested by some people" when in fact it's not digested or metabolized by humans at all) and your native gut flora. Some gut flora can metabolize inulin and gas is a possible by-product of that process.

Inulin is actually added to some products (Stonyfield Farm Yogurt comes to mind) as a "probiotic" that is supposed to encourage the growth of certain "good" bacteria.

As for why my family has no problem with jerusalem artichokes and other people do, I can't really say except to speculate that we may have a different mix of gut flora.

Does a product like GasX or Beano help at all with the afteraffects? I never knew they were edible, I just thought they were pretty garden things!

A jerusalem artichoke (also called a sun choke) is anything but pretty. Even the part on the surface side isn't that remarkable.

This is the tuber under discussion:
http://windowboxherbs.50megs.com/jer...0artichoke.htm

Specifically this: http://www.dkimages.com/discover/Hom...tichoke-3.html
although it can often look like this
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/k...lem-artichoke/

I've no idea whether those products would work. I never have anything like it at home and the effects of the Jerusalem Artichoke strike hard and fast.

yamakake has given a great description of the probable causes - whether the tea or cider vinegar chaser inhibits the 'appetite' of the flora which digests inulin I have no idea.

I still have a few more tubers to eat (and they are far too delicious not to run the gauntlet) so I'll give the vinegar preventative remedy a try and report back.

I've only had these in various raw/marinated/pickled form. They can be used to make an awesome relish - better than any cucumber version. Never had any problems with gas.

Do you have a recipe or something? I've never heard of them being prepared this way. (And if made into a pickle/relish - could the vinegar have something to do with your not getting any side effects?)

You can find a number of recipes on the web. The one I was thinking of is something my father made for years but I do not have the specific recipe. His version did *not* include cabbage, green pepper, or flour. It was just a crunchy tart delight very similar to a basic pickle relish but using 'chokes.

There is a resaurant in Phoenix called Quiessence that makes use of sunchokes in various ways including chips. Their marinated version came as part of a charcutie plate and was quite tasty. Perhaps a bit of a hike for you...

Well I guess we havedifferent tastes. I have seen many plants and they can flower quite a bit. Kind of like a daisy only pretty yellow. Heck Monet thought they were pretty enough to also do a couple famous paintings of them in a vase.....

http://www.marysplantfarm.com/_photo...0artichoke.jpg

Jerusalem artichokes as chips/crisps are pretty straightforward.

The relish thing seems really alien, and the recipes I have seen are incredibly varied. Some are pretty much 'patatas a lo pobre' sauted with oil and spices with a few slugs of vinegar, others involve marinating them raw.

---
kukukajoo - must be a matter of taste, they just look like weeds to me... But then, I'm not into sunflowers either, even Van Gogh's series look like lions terrifying petrified lambs, all trapped together in a vase - his love/hate relationship with Gauguin seems clear when I see them, I'm not so sure this 'gift' was meant to be merely cheery. I do like stripping sunflowers for their velvety 'pipas'/seeds. Yum!