How do you cook poke?

I’ve been trying for two years so far to cook poke (Phytolacca americana) properly, but each time it ends up turning to mush in the pot, or has some leftover mouth-tingliness that I’ve read is associated with toxins. (Often both…) Poke is so easy to grow and is a healthy, high-yielding, and traditional perennial vegetable, so I’m wondering if anyone with an intact poke-gathering tradition, or any self-taught poke-eaters, can help guide me and other confused vegetable-eaters along.

Thank you!

Maieshe Ljin wrote:I’ve been trying for two years so far to cook poke (Phytolacca americana) properly, but each time it ends up turning to mush in the pot, or has some leftover mouth-tingliness that I’ve read is associated with toxins. (Often both…) Poke is so easy to grow and is a healthy, high-yielding, and traditional perennial vegetable, so I’m wondering if anyone with an intact poke-gathering tradition, or any self-taught poke-eaters, can help guide me and other confused vegetable-eaters along.

Thank you!

I cook poke shoots and greens differently than most ever source I've read.  Most say, "boil in 3 changes of water then fry in fat." I think I have built up a tolerance to the toxin in poke over many years and even generations of eating it.  I'll eat a handful of spring leaves raw with no ill effect, and when I use the root medicinally, I usually just eat a bite of it (which most folks say can kill you).  I just sauté my spring poke in bacon grease or olive oil with salt.... or boil once then sauté if a bit older. A friend a big raw poke salad, mistaking the word for salat... called poison control, and they told her not to worry as it would evacuate her system quickly with no ill effects.  It was an unpleasant night for her, but no big deal. So, disclaimer: Don't do what I do.  But, I don't fear this plant as much as most do, and I don't like cooking it to flavorless mush as most recommend.  It has a unique, sweet garden pea flavor that I enjoy.

I found this passage in The Secrets of Wildflowers by Jack Sanders:

“The plant was particularly valued because it could produce fresh greens year-round, thus helping to prevent ailments like scurvy. Farmers would dig up at least a portion of the huge rootstock (sometimes as thick as a man’s thigh) and place it in a box of dirt in the cellar. All through the winter, the root would send up fresh shoots, which could be harvested at least once a week.”

The book also suggests that poke is declining because of the extinction of passenger pigeons, one of their main avian means of dispersal. I have noticed that they don’t spread very much or very far, too little considering their former popularity, and suppose that is why.