Kudzu as food

I just got back from my 50th birthday dinner, my wife took me to a Japanese Kaiseki restaurant  here in Toronto, we had a tasting menu with a flight of sake, amazing. For dessert there was a sweet kudzu pudding, tasty. it was made with powdered kudzu root. Apparently a popular and expensive ingredient  in Japan.Who knew? so There is a market for the stuff, just thought i'd throw it out here for our southern  members. cheers

I live in kudzu country and have long kept it at bay with my goats. My vet says it's equivalent to alfalfa in nutrition, so it's been great goat food (plus they love it). I've heard it's edible for people too, and had to dig around on my blog to find where I linked to kudzu recipes. That led to a new search, and here are some great recipes that I found!

Kudzu blossom jelly and recipes for leaves at Angela's Kudzu Recipes web page.







Lots of interesting recipes call for kudzu starch (AKA Japanese Arrowroot).









But I had a hard time finding instructions to make it myself (which makes sense, since I'm a Permie and I have kudzu growing on my property). The best video I found demonstrates the traditional Vietnamese method of making kudzu powder.



It looks like quite the process, but I definitely want to give it a try someday.

I've long wondered why kudzu isn't controlled by using it as a cash-crop. It's very healthful and buying it from Japan is expensive. Why not have kudzu factories in the South?
The problem is the solution..

I just went on a botanical walk in the mountains here led by a botanist from the local botanical gardens. She was talking about how kudzu has also become a problem in Japan (not as much as in the US) because people have stopped making kudzu mochi. One of the older people asked why, she said probably because it's a pain in the neck to process and cook.

I think this is the case with many invasives... J. knotweed is also a delightful snack if you collect it while it's a young shoot (and therefore stunt it's monstrous growth). If you eat them, they are less of a problem.

Kudzu is a brilliant remedy and anti viral. I use it.
This is not intended as advice. Talk to your medical practitioner.
hugshugs from late spring New Zealand where I am having kumara (native sweet potato) adventures in the garden today.

Kudzu is indeed a fascinating species!  I did a research project into the vine in college.  Here are a few things that I can recall...

It was first brought to North America from Japan as an ornamental, I think at an exhibit at a World Fair or similar event.  This was in the late 1800s.  It existed in an ornamental capacity for some years after that only in a small area around Washington DC.  But it first came into widespread use when it was introduced as erosion control in the South in the early 20th Century.  Deforestation and poor agricultural practices had lead to the spread of gullies, which accelerate erosion.  Put simply, large portions of the South were quickly washing down into the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, and kudzu was seen as the most cost-effective way to stabilize the soil due to its lightening-fast growth and deep root structure.

Now, of course, we recognize that those same traits make it a difficult invasive to control.

Over the decades, there have been a couple movements to start new industries around kudzu in order to cash in on the vine's remarkable vitality, hailing it as the potential wonder-crop of the new century.  These campaigns either centered around its value as animal fodder, or around fostering new markets  in the USA for kudzu products as had been traditionally made in Asia.  Interestingly enough, those traditional uses did not include animal fodder, at least not in Japan, where kudzu grows mostly in the deep mountains.  Historically, though, none of these "pro-kudzu" campaigns ever caught on.  I don't know why not.

I see that people here have already mentioned using the starch extracted from the large roots.  Many good culinary uses there.  And people have mentioned making teas and jellies from the fragrant flowers, which have a scent like crushed grapes.

There are a couple more traditional uses that I remember.  When you are finished extracting the starch, the left-over root fibers can be chopped and used as reinforcement in plaster and other earthen building materials.  Also, fibers from the vines themselves were traditionally processed to make a water-resistant form of "hemp" for clothing.

I would also imagine that the rapid growth could make kudzu a good candidate for producing bio-mass for energy production...?

Cara Campbell wrote:I've long wondered why kudzu isn't controlled by using it as a cash-crop. It's very healthful and buying it from Japan is expensive. Why not have kudzu factories in the South?
The problem is the solution..

But there's a marketing problem. Culturally in the US, Kudzu isn't seen as human food. That's why no "kudzu factories" in the South.  Kenaf makes a very superior paper compared to wood pulp, is a much easier crop to grow and harvest, but the processing of kenaf into paper is different from all the current paper production systems in the US. The willingness to invest in a pilot plant to prove the economic potential has not been found. And that's for paper - a product already familiar and for which there is a global market.

This thread was begun by someone who had only just discovered kudzu is even edible. There's your why.

Cara Campbell wrote:I've long wondered why kudzu isn't controlled by using it as a cash-crop. It's very healthful and buying it from Japan is expensive. Why not have kudzu factories in the South?
The problem is the solution..

I lived in the south for 7 years and I was so surprised that kudzu wasn't being monetized! The vines make wonderful basket-weaving material; the young leaves are edible by humans; it makes great livestock feed, as has been pointed out; and now I learn that there are many ways to prepare and eat the roots!
When I lived in Oregon, there were wild blackberries growing everywhere, and people called them invasive pests! They hated them, but I used to spend hours picking them, making pies and jam, and just snacking on them. During the summer, my arms were always a map of scratches and scabs from gathering blackberries. Yum!

Macrobiotic diets include kudzu for making desserts and drinks and there are a lot of macrobiotic followers (though fewere probably than in past years). So there's definitely a market and think of the fuel saved by having locally grown kudzu.

Leif Kravis wrote:There is a market for the stuff, just thought i'd throw it out here for our southern members. cheers

Cara Campbell wrote:I've long wondered why kudzu isn't controlled by using it as a cash-crop. It's very healthful and buying it from Japan is expensive. Why not have kudzu factories in the South? The problem is the solution..

Matthew Nistico wrote:Over the decades, there have been a couple movements to start new industries around kudzu in order to cash in on the vine's remarkable vitality, hailing it as the potential wonder-crop of the new century. . . Historically, though, none of these "pro-kudzu" campaigns ever caught on.  I don't know why not.

M Wilcox wrote:I lived in the south for 7 years and I was so surprised that kudzu wasn't being monetized!

I think we all agree that all parts of the kudzu plant are useful and therefore worthy of production. And I think there are two ways to look at it.

The first is industrialized commercial production. This approach is very successful in Asia, where kudzu is valued as a production crop.

Kudzu root processing plant in China.

Photo source

You can find a really interesting article and more photos at xinhuanet.com

But there are obstacles to commercialized production here in the U.S., a major one being that kudzu is classified as an invasive species and therefore illegal to plant in many places.

The second approach is permaculture! There are two really excellent articles on how this has been successful in North Carolina.

From enemy to ally: Kudzu Camp seeks to overturn misconceptions
Could a plant that ate the South be its savior?

These truly show how to make the problem the solution, and kudzu is well suited to small scale production where it's already established. It would be an excellent source of income for a small family farm or homestead home business.

Maybe someone would be interesting in focusing on kudzu for the Commerce PEP Badge (?)

This, from the Garden gate magazine:
"IDENTIFICATION — Known as “the vine that ate the South,” this perennial weed thrives in USDA zones 5 to 11 from Florida to Oklahoma and north to Connecticut and Illinois. Kudzu can grow up to a foot a day, eventually stretching to 100 ft. long.
https://www.gardengatemagazine.com/newsletter/2008/09/23/kudzu/#:~:text=IDENTIFICATION%20%E2%80%94%20Known%20as%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20vine,long.
Hmmm. "The vine that ate the South". That is not how you commercialize a staple.
It won't grow in central Wisconsin, but zone 5 is not far from here. Wisconsin is known as the Dairy State.
Would it be possible to combine the stuff? [I suspect not, but thought I would ask] If not, could farmers "rent" their cows to graze the stuff? That could be a win-win. If we still have chain gangs, this labor could be used effectively to remove/ market kudzu?
I remember a few years back when hay wasn't to be had at any price Farmers asked if they could use the medians on interstates for their cows. I don't think it took on because of all the garbage that cows should not eat, but in principle, that is doable: First send a human crew to pick up the trash, then send in the cows [with proper signage, of course, like "Kudzu removal operation ahead. Slow down", along with the threat of a big fine.
I read that is has extensive roots, and it is the roots that would be more useful to humans for flour/ starch. That may be one of the reasons it is not being used extensively. [How deep do you have to dig? Deeper than potatoes or carrots? That is its own problem]
Invasive species can be turned into food. We have invasive mussels in the streams of Wisconsin. They are too small to eat by humans but they super filter water, leaving no food for our *regular* mussels, which are disappearing [and are not commercialized anyway]It might be a solution to allow them in streams that are saturated by nitrates to reclaim the purity of the water, but that would not help our indigenous mussels. They could be gleaned, crushed and composted or fed to captive fish, but it may not be commercially feasible. Here is an interesting article about our indigenous mussels, even if it doesn't fit neatly in this thread, it is still about invasives/ indigenous:
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/wnrmag/2019/Fall/Mussels#:~:text=Native%20mussels%20require%20a%20fish,species%20reaching%2010%20inches%20across.
A perceived 'problem' is a solution in waiting. It is up to us to connect the two.

Large scale use as a food crop runs into two issues. The first is equipment and cultural knowledge, which others have mentioned.
The other is location. While there are places (mostly abandoned farm fields) where kuzu could be harvested on a larger scale, possibly with mechanization, most of what you see is on roadsides, where it was planted to prevent erosion, with some creep into the first wooded layer.
Most people, myself included, are hesitant to harvest food within the road runoff zone. Even if you did, digging up all the roots that are preventing erosion would cause problems.
Where it has enroached on the woods, you still can’t harvest by machine in any way that I can see, so you are digging large deep roots in an area strewn with tree roots, which. In order to be economically viable, the product would have to be quite valuable - like ginseng, or goldenseal. The economics might make sense for medicinal use, but probably not for food, where a wildecrafter doesn’t usually get a lot per pound.
So, definitely issues with a commercial food industry based on wild harvested kudzu. Paper - possibly. Id love to see an analysis of this - how much pulp would an acre of kuzu yield, how many tons/day would a small papermill need to stay in business, how many acres are available in the most overgrown areas of the south, and how much can you harvest without killing the plants?

Hay is another option for the leaves/vines. I collect it by hand and lay it out to dry before tossing it on the goats' hay pile. Awhile back, I found a 1949 patent application for a kudzu hay harvester.



The feasibility of actually doing this is challenged by the same problems Lina mentions; it tends to grow in hilly areas near trees. Then it climbs the trees and entwines itself so that it's impossible to pull down.

Seems like the solutions have to be local and have to be small. Again, I think it could be a great opportunity for permaculture small holders. Like Justin Holt and Zev Friedman (mentioned in the articles I linked to above ^^^)

Lina Joana wrote:Large scale use as a food crop runs into two issues. The first is equipment and cultural knowledge, which others have mentioned.
The other is location. While there are places (mostly abandoned farm fields) where kuzu could be harvested on a larger scale, possibly with mechanization, most of what you see is on roadsides, where it was planted to prevent erosion, with some creep into the first wooded layer.

The problem seems to be the roots - pigs come to mind. The snouted sort, rather than stub-nosed.

This is the best article I found on kudzu as forage  for our animals: chickens, pigs, goats, camelids: and beef and dairy cattle can eat it too, either fresh or as silage.
https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/can-pigs-eat-kudzu/

Kudzu roots are large, gnarly, irregularly shaped, and don't grow in a way that is easy to extract from the ground. They grow in massive, convoluted, tangled systems. I have only seen them dug out with pickaxes at backbreaking labor from hard clay. The roots are also usually in and around other plants. Removing these root masses on any kind of economically viable scale would also leave a lot of room for immediate erosion. The roots also require a lot of labor intensive processing to become edible which also reduces the volume of harvested matter.

Adding on the issues mentioned above, this isn't a problem with an easy solution. I think there are a lot of people who are interested in tackling it, and some do on some level, but it's not simple and it's not a money maker.

I grew up in kudzu country and know people who have great ideas for how to use it, but I believe it's only currently viable for individuals to utilize it for their own or family use, not as a business. Not to say it's not possible, but it's not simple. Educating many more individuals on the potential uses might be a way to control it in some way, if many more people became foragers or wildcrafters, but dang if that stuff doesn't grow fast and high and there's only so far I'll go neck deep into a kudzu patch in the reptile and insect rich south!

Mercy Pergande wrote:Kudzu roots are large, gnarly, irregularly shaped, and don't grow in a way that is easy to extract from the ground. They grow in massive, convoluted, tangled systems. I have only seen them dug out with pickaxes at backbreaking labor from hard clay. The roots are also usually in and around other plants. Removing these root masses on any kind of economically viable scale would also leave a lot of room for immediate erosion. The roots also require a lot of labor intensive processing to become edible which also reduces the volume of harvested matter.

This is all very true, and anyone thinking about kudzu for a homestead-scale permaculture application should take note.  While the massive growth rate of the above-ground mass has obvious value and many uses, the roots are probably something best left in the ground.  An old, well-established vine can have a root the size of a man.  It grows large, heavy, and deep.

Industrial-scale harvesting could be practical, as has been demonstrated in Asia.  For most of us, though, I suspect home-scale root harvest is not a good idea.