Fartychokes for calories

At last they are flowering. My aim is to spread them far and wide for an energy crop for all of us next year. When should I harvest - now or after die back?

We usually dig them in the middle of winter. I think the flavour improves a bit with cold.

Thank you, Phil!

I've tried early and late, early they are less difficult to clean.Less dirt in less crevices. The taste i wouldn't know about. I make soup or cook them, if the farting bothers you i've read to let it sit for a day and then reheat. I personally was disapointed about how farty i got, it's like the stomach gets used to it. Bummer..

I am going to put some in my dogs' food. It cannot possibly make them worse!

Had quite a petite girlfriend at the time, the noises she made belonged in a zoo, we were rolling about laughing.

Hugo Morvan wrote:Had quite a petite girlfriend at the time, the noises she made belonged in a zoo, we were rolling about laughing.

Awesome!  Just told him indoors about that and he is still giggling!

If the personal levels of emissions get out of hand, chickens and ducks love them.

Phil Stevens wrote:If the personal levels of emissions get out of hand, chickens and ducks love them.

Chickens and ducks love farts?

Some people can digest them better than others.  I'm one who can't digest them well.  The first harvest I did of mine was just after the first frost of the year.  I ate them and had the most painful, explosive gas I've ever experienced in my life, and if you really knew me you'd know that's saying something!!  I then ignored the plants for a few years figuring I couldn't really eat them.

I've since learned more about them.  If you want the most inulin, the part that produces the gas, then harvest in the fall.  If, however, you want the least and you want the tubers to be sweeter they you should wait to harvest until early spring when the soil become workable again.  At that point the inulin will have had the most time to break down into simpler sugars that are easier to digest.  So this is what I now do.  For me though this still isn't enough.  I also will cook the crap out of them to break it all down more, as in have them simmering for a couple days.  I envy those of you who can eat them raw as they'd be so excellent that way.

I second that wait for them to be frosted more and cook longer. Also, treat them like water chestnuts or turnips, not potatoes. Potatoes I can eat in quantity.  Turnips I taste the fiber and naturally stop. Fartichokes don't taste fibery to me, but the output afterwards is definitely biogas.


Anyone know if there's a low inulin variety of sunchoke?

Elizabeth Geller wrote:Chickens and ducks love farts?

The tubers. Insufficient data to make any claims on the other.

Are the calories metabolized if you can't digest the 'chokes?

Tyler Ludens wrote:Are the calories metabolized if you can't digest the 'chokes?

That's an interesting question. It's just the inulin that we don't digest, and apparently it's a probiotic rock star...most of us have gut microbes that devour the stuff. From what I gleaned surfing the web, inulin is a family of polysaccharides, also found in beans and many other high-fibre foods.

To make beans less farty, you can soak them overnight, cook them well, and add certain herbs: epazote, I believe, is one of them.

If your farting, doesn't that mean your microbiome is working at the fiber making the gas?

Phil Stevens wrote:It's just the inulin that we don't digest

Isn't inulin a kind of carbohydrate (a fructose)?  If this carbohydrate isn't being digested, where are the calories coming from?

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Phil Stevens wrote:It's just the inulin that we don't digest

Isn't inulin a kind of carbohydrate (a fructose)?  If this carbohydrate isn't being digested, where are the calories coming from?

There are other carbohydrates in them as well as some protein and a tiny bit of fat.  I did just go and look up the nutrition profile for them at:  https://www.nutrition-and-you.com/jerusalem-artichoke.html

In the write up it says they are, "especially high in oligo-fructose inulin, which is a soluble non-starch polysaccharide."  It also says that "Inulin is a zero calorie saccharine and inert carbohydrate which does not undergo metabolism inside the human body".

My personal suspicion is that when testing is done to determine the calorie count of a food whatever is "counting" the calories does register the inulin even if our bodies don't actually utilize it.  I believe the high dietary fiber of them is another matter not necessarily related to the gas.  From what I've been learning more broadly fiber is what much of our gut microbiome is eating and it's good to feed them.

David Huang wrote:"Inulin is a zero calorie saccharine and inert carbohydrate which does not undergo metabolism inside the human body"

So from that, it looks like Sunchokes are not a good calorie crop for humans, but might be a good one for critters who can digest them, and then get eaten by humans.

Tyler Ludens wrote: So from that, it looks like Sunchokes are not a good calorie crop for humans, but might be a good one for critters who can digest them, and then get eaten by humans.

I suspect that you're correct Tyler, unless they are cooked for long periods of time as is done with camas, which is also packed with inulin.  Camas:  So, you're into slow food?

According to this paper for sunchokes: "Total carbohydrate content of the tubers is divided into 80–90% inulin, 7–14% sucrose and 3–6% reducing sugars, on average."

I wonder if there's any record of native Americans doing large 48 hour pit roastings with sunchokes like was done with camas?  I wonder if sunchokes take it as well?  More experimenting to do!!!

Researching how to break down inulin. I found this study:
THE EFFECT OF pH, TEMPERATURE
AND HEATING TIME ON INULIN CHEMICAL STABILITY
Paweł Glibowski, Anna Bukowska
University of Life Sciences in Lublin
"Results. The conducted studies showed that inulin chemical stability at pH  4 decreased
with an increase of heating time and temperature. In a neutral and basic environment inu-
lin was chemically stable regardless of heating time and temperature.
Conclusions. Inulin application in food systems may be limited in acidic products espe-
cially when heated above 60°C during the production process. However, in products at pH
≥ 5, the degradation of this fructan does not occur even at thermal processing."

Science Direct says Jerusalem artichokes are only up to 10% inulin of percent wet weight. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/inulin

Some research into pH says there are foods it could be added to and it is a pH of 6, which is about the same as beets. https://www.pickyourown.org/ph_of_foods.htm

Looks like if you mix a little lemon juice or vinegar in with them while you cook you solve the problem. Anyone want to the Guinea pig or already have experience with this?

Ever wonder what would happen if you mixed two unusual things together and figured no one would ever have researched that, but then you google it and there it is? Well, this is one of those times.  Acorns are high in tannic acid and require a lot of cooking. They were a common Native American food. Sunchokes are high in inulin and require heat+acid to break down the inulin. They were also a common Native American food. My though was what if that last boil of acorns you threw in the sunchokes: what would happen? This paper seems to address just that: https://books.google.com/books?id=Sx8VNIE1APsC&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=tannic+acid+plus+inulin&source=bl&ots=N3Zkjlu9Pm&sig=ACfU3U1M20oa4zjYvU0S7AXwtLNtq7mgkQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB3v35hdvkAhXTl54KHS2jD20Q6AEwGnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=tannic acid plus inulin&f=false

Let me know if you can understand it as I do that mixing tannic acid and inulin breaks down inulin to a sweet "sugar". I'm going to run this by my sister who does research and speaks this language.

Thanks!

Maybe this is an obvious question, but has anyone tried fermenting them?

Phil Stevens wrote:Maybe this is an obvious question, but has anyone tried fermenting them?

Lacto-Fermented Pickled Sunchokes!

:)  That will address the pH issue too!  I can't wait to try this.  Jocelyn has and said they were well liked.

Awesome Greg and Amit!  I was wondering just how much of the carbohydrate was inulin.  Apparently pretty high.  The thought that an acidic solution would break it down better never occurred to me either.  I definitely must try that out, and then combining that thought with acorns which I'm trying to find ways to utilize...  just fabulous!!  I may just have to harvest some tubers this fall instead of spring and see what happens.  Spring is probably still better for me, but at the moment I don't want to wait!  If anyone else does try this first please report back!  

I think if you mixed the fartychokes and the acorns together and passed them through the digestive system of a pig, they would make great bacon.

This whole acorn+fartychokes thing and acorn season got me thinking and running some calculations. My quest is to grow all our food on our little suburban temperate lot. For arguments sake, I thought what production in calories could be made if you take a mature red oak and plant an understory of sunchokes? The calculations are a bit shakey. I pulled the production based on acres of mid-level producing trees 200,000 acorns/acre to a single mature tree 36 trees per acre. Then using 10 calories per acorn (estimate converting ounces to individual acorns). I got 55,555 Calories per tree. I then added in the fartychoke production based on Ecology Action's grow biointense average numbers for the approximate canopy square footage of 900sqft. This means another 639,630 Calories. Together, these two things can provide enough Calories for one person just under one tree!! Double check me on this, but if I'm right, the population this could sustain/could have sustained in the past is HUGE.

My concern would be - will the Sunchokes grow in the dense shade of the Oak?  In an Oak savannah system, I can see the Sunchokes occupying the spaces between Oaks, but on a little suburban lot, I think the Oak would dominate too much space and make it almost impossible to grow much else.

I don't know if sunchokes would grow under an oak tree or not, but I do have a nice mature oak here on my property and I can tell you there is a LOT of undergrowth around it, so you can certainly grow some things underneath one.  That said my sunchokes are all growing in areas of full sun.  I've never tried them in full or partial shade so I don't know how they'd do there.

Has anyone tried sous vide-ing either sunchokes or camass?  It seems like a very controllable way to cook them in a moist environment for a long time.  (My BF is paranoid and won't be able to sleep with the oven on overnight, but the Anova is fine.  I end up being the one worrying it will steam off too much water and am up all night...)  Also, the prices of sous vide machines are dropping all the time, and the energy requirement seems not terrible: https://www.amazingfoodmadeeasy.com/info/modernist-cooking-blog/more/how-much-energy-does-sous-vide-use

Here's a recipe that looks useful - and the lemon juice might help reduce the inulin:  https://blog.sousvidesupreme.com/2014/04/spring-sunchokes/
And a bunch of cooks talking about how to use sunchokes (in very upscale ways) - the comments are actually more useful:  https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/05/what-to-do-with-sunchokes.html

Ok, I can just stop by the market and try at least the sunchokes.  Will report back.

A rotten sunchoke I threw out started growing under the canopy of my oaks this spring.  Doing just fine there. It's not that dense if you space them 30' apart, which is the numbers I used.

I tried throwing a few (4) de-shelled red acorns in with the sunchokes and boil. Here are my observations:

First, the sunchoke centers turned to mush within an hour, but the skins remained whole.

The flavor was sunchokey. The longer I boiled it though, the less sunchokey, but also no increased sweetness.

The acorns seemed to get detannined faster than without sunchokes.

I didn't eat enough to test the gas potential of the farty chokes. I am trying to increase my crop for next year so it was a small harvest.

If I were to do this again, which I think I will, I would not add so much water. I would add just enough to cover the produce so I could cook it longer without a reduction in flavor.

The fact that the acorns lost their tannin flavor in the sunchokes was the most interesting. I always think of acorns as the food that heats your home without drying you out, but perhaps mixing them with sunchokes gives them the opportunity to mix into other mixed produce dishes.

I wonder if a haybox or retained heat cooker would be a good low energy/ tech way to cook them?

Sorry, this post is long and most of the bottom is replying to Amit with theoreticals that I find fascinating but IDK if anyone else will.
  I've read many places that you just let the frost hit them and wait until the stalks die off and the gas isn't bad.  It was something like the frost turned the gassy inulin into fructose.  Some say putting them in the freezer works too.  This makes it sweeter.  I waited until a few frosts and we made meals and I gave about 20 people some to eat and no one complained.  Some wouldn't due to politeness but many of them would've let me know one way or another .
   William: the haybox is cool so I might try to make one if I can (time, ability, etc) and I'll let you know if it works for sunchokes.
   Amit: that calculation is great and just like you this subject fascinates me greatly.  I never thought about growing an acorn tree but perhaps that could be the center of a food forest area I'm thinking about.  You could get even more production since studies show that some sunchokes produce maximally at 17" apart compared to your 30" but even closer doesn't seem to affect it much.  I know we like simple calculations that reality doesn't abide by but that is almost double the calories produced but IDK the Ecology Action's planting space.  But what about adding more such as beans around the entire perimeter; I've even heard of many adding it directly into the patch and they still grew but I'm trying that this year to see the results.  They say you can grow peanuts with sunchokes but I have lots of squirrels so I'm afraid they'll find the peanuts and then eat my sunchokes too just out of spite, they hate my dog.  http://www.gardeningplaces.com/articles/nutrition-per-hectare1.htm says peanuts produce 923 kcals/sq m; which in this canopy of 900sq ft would equal 76,609.  The beans I'll calculate on the edge of 30'x30' so one plant per foot is 120 plants and I couldn't get a good answer one bean production per plant/foot.  So I went with 120 sq foot of production of soybeans which produce 6.2m/acre.  That is an extra 17,079 calories. I couldn't find it but I assume these are bush beans and vine beans generally produce more.  Maybe grow a vine in the acorn/sunchoke shade for extra nutrition or even calories.  You can grow the American Groundnut using sunchokes so they seem to coexist which I find odd (same with peanuts though) but they might be able to climb up the acorn tree also since they do well in part-shade; I guess it depends on how much shade the tree has.  I want to try the groundnut in various areas (around sunchokes, trees, etc) but I think the squirrels would make it a waste of time to even try. I'm experimenting slowly but I hope to figure out how to maximize varying amounts of space.

I never cook sunchokes without adding ginger, which takes care (mostly) of the flatulence problem.  Also harvesting after a good frost makes them easier to digest. We love them.  I use in soups, stir fried with carrots in a little coconut oil and the ginger/ salt and thyme.  

We had four patches here but our American Guinea Hogs who were free ranging, lifted the gates (one did and taught the rest) off the hinges, got in and rooted up three of those patches.  I found another location because I figured there was nothing left in the former ones and I’d plant something else there.  Lo and behold, not only did those patches come back up, but apparently an enzyme in the pigs saliva has greatly enriched the soil with microbes.  Healthiest plants I’ve ever seen.   The demand for them is strong here and the price high, $8. per pound.   If I have enough organic matter in the soil, dirt does not stick to them and I can just spray in a basket with the water hose, turn into another basket and repeat a few times and they are pretty clean.  Easier than scrubbing by hand.   When I cook them, any pieces I trim off goes to chickens or pigs.  However, sold the pigs after that fiasco.  

They seem to grow best in areas where I’ve put in a foot thick layer of leaves over winter.  It rots down into beautiful compost and eliminates the sticky clay problem which makes them hard to wash.  Earthworms mix the broken leaves down into the subsoil, greatly improving tilth.  

The leaves of the plants make great fodder for livestock and very high protein.  I harvest some as they are growing, usually as they bloom when roots are already forming, so it doesn’t detract from the tuber growth.  Deer sometimes get in th garden and eat the tops down.  They recover if not too much is eaten, and it makes them bunch up more, so I don’t think it affects the final crop.  I started pruning them back a little when they are three feet high, drying tops for forage.  The dried stalks are great fire kindling.  I put the wood ash back on the garden and pastures.   Nothing is wasted.  

In previous years I have juiced my Yacon (another inulin loaded tuber,), then boiled it down to a syrup (which has a lovely rich earthy taste.)  As last winter I lost the majority of the Yacon growing tips to some hard frosts the thought occurred this year that I could try the same process with Jerusalem artichokes (as they're known in these parts.)  I haven't done it yet but will hopefully find some time before the end of winter.