Chinese broccoli can you eat the flowers

Chinese broccoli should have very few florets. Also take a look at the bottoms of the stems — fresh young Chinese broccoli will have a wet-milky-transluscent-ish color in the center of the stem. Choy Sum. We have come to call Chinese kai lan kale, but these bunches of green leaves are rougher in texture, softly furling at the edges with thinner stems than their Chinese cousins.

Like many leafy green vegetables, Chinese broccoli is a powerhouse of nutrients. Vitamin E decreases the risk of some cancers and improves immune function, preventing viral and bacterial infections.

This green is a great source of dietary fiber as well. In general, broccoli is safe to eat, and any side effects are not serious. Chinese kale vegetable Brassica oleracea var. First and foremost, it should be pointed out that yu choy and yu choy sum are already somewhat different, but can substitute for one another. Gai lan makes a respectable replacement, thought it has a thicker stem which requires longer cooking or cutting into smaller pieces and a more broccoli-like flavour.

Bok choy makes a good replacement from a flavour perspective, though it usually lacks some of the mustardy flavour of yu choy sum and a has different texture when cooked. Like gai lan, it tends to be a bit tougher and more flavourful, and its bitterness is more pronounced. Interestingly, rapini is actually quite closely related to yu choy - both are edible members of the 'rape' group Brassica rapa. As already mentioned above, there is some inherent variation in the size and taste of this vegetable.

When marketed as choy sum , it tends to be relatively small, tender, and mild. There can be some overlap of course, given that growth is continuous.

Nutrition Facts Yu Choy Sum - g 3. Exceptionally high in Vitamins A and C and moderately high in Calcium. The entire above-ground portion of the young plant is eaten, including the leaves and stalks. The small flowers are also edible.

There is no GM or gene-edited choy sum in the human food supply. This plant and its relatives are monitored for potential GM cross-contamination see note below. Exceptionally high doses have been linked to thyroid dysfunction.

Both organic and conventionally grown choy sum are commercially available, though organic availability is often very limited regionally. It may be found through some niche retailers, or at farmers markets. All vegetables from this species Brassica rapa as well as several related plants in the mustard family are on this watchlist, and are tested regularly by non-GMO watchgroups.

Disclaimer - the information here is meant to act as a guide, and should not replace the advice of a trained medical professional. Yu choy sum is an extremely healthy, nutrient-dense food. In fact, it is even more nutrient-dense than some of its relatives e. Yu choy sum is a member of the family Brassicaceae the cabbage and mustard family , a group often referred to as the cruciferous vegetables. Members of this family contains chemical components called glucosinolates, which are responsible for giving these plants their distinctive, pungent scent.

These compounds have interesting effects in the human body. The average person dislikes consuming insects, and people who enjoy eating insect-based dishes frequently object to consuming insects of unknown species that are not part of the recipe. This is a cultural thing of course, my own great-grandfather always laughed at people cutting out worms from apples - for him, the worm was as much a part of the apple as the pips.

But the average westernized cultural setting today views that insects are disgusting and should not be eaten. So the seller won't tell you which insects these are - they don't know and it doesn't matter to them. They just assume that you don't want to eat the insects, like the overwhelming majority of their customers.

And so they tell you what method to apply - cut away the flowers - to avoid eating the insects. I suspect that they may have had outraged customers returning vegetables as "defective" if they found out they have insects in their food, and have taken to preemptively give advice how to get rid of the insects.

As for the objective harm, that's highly unlikely to happen. There are very few insects which can damage your health, and these tend to be human or animal parasites, not the kind of insect which lives on a vegetable. So if you eat the flowers and swallow the insects unnoticed, no harm done. If you notice them, there can be emotional harm or not, depending on whether this is a disgust trigger for you or not.

I believe that this advice is strictly your local Chinese grocer, and does not apply in general or anywhere else. I have shopped at many different Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean grocery stores in several different US cities.

I have Chinese friends that I cook with. I have never been personally advised to remove the flowers before. Further, I checked several online guides on preparing gai lan for cooking, including this , this , and this , and none of them advised removing the flowers. Nor did the books Chinese Greens nor Fuschia Dunlop's cookbooks. So, speaking in general, they are not correct which makes the second part of the question irrelevant.

However, that particular Chinese grocer may be correctly speaking about that specific batch of gai lan that they are selling. So maybe check those or go to a different grocer. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

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