Purslane: The Most Delicious Weed

This incredible little beauty called purslane is a wild and underappreciated gem of a plant. Sprouting up on it’s own, it is as common as dandelions and also edible and power packed with nutrition. Unlike the dandelion which is quite bitter, purslane is just very mildly tangy and peppery. It’s dense rounded leaves add an interesting texture to any salad and go well with lots of vinegar based dressings.

Look around your garden and you’ll most likely see tiny spouts of this plant have popped up. Don’t pull them out! Let the plant mature and you’ll have some great, FREE extra nutrition to add to your next sandwich or salad. Just chop them up to tiny pieces and mix it in with your regular greens. The stems are edible too, just make sure they are bite sized. They are absolutely delicious.

These little beauties are from the succulent family (that plant that everyone loves on Instagram) and because of funny science stuff having to do with photosynthesis, they are actually more tangy in the morning than in the evening if your palette is sensitive to the mild tartness. Some people love the slight zing. You can purchase the seeds if you’d like, but I’ve found that they love to spring up on their own where ever I try to grow tomatoes without fail every single year. Just keep your eyes open for those rounded leaves, weed around it, and watch it bloom into a full sized plant that’s ready to harvest.

The nutritional value of eating these puppies is astronomical:

Purslane contains more omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy green vegetable, these are important for brain and mood health. They also contain vitamin C, Vitamin A, Vitmain E, B vitamins and minerals like magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron. They even have tons of antioxidants hidden in that reddish tint. Pretty much what you need it has.

I just picked a bunch of these and some garden fresh rainbow swiss chard, added in chickpeas, walnuts, raisins, and some fresh picked wild black raspberries, and then dressed the whole thing with a lovely balsamic dressing and it was heavenly. All the textures and flavors came together so nicely and it couldn’t be a better meal for me with all those vitamins and plenty of plant based protein from the beans and walnuts. #winning

Do a little scouting around and see if you find some to add to your next salad and let me know what you think. ❤