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Know Your Fruits and Veggies™
By Dawn Swidorski, Public Outreach Director
Broccoli
I must admit that
when my mother first presented broccoli to me when I was a child I was a bit
dubious. But she won me over by convincing me that I could be like the Jolly
Green Giant and eat little trees.
Broccoli is a member of the Cabbage family, Brassicaceae
and is actually a cultivar of wild cabbage. Wild cabbage originated along the
northern and western coasts of the Mediterranean, where it was domesticated
thousands of years ago. That
domesticated cabbage was eventually bred into other varieties, including
broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts.
Even though broccoli made it to the US by the late 18th
century; Thomas Jefferson even grew some at Monticello, it didn’t become
popular until Italian immigrants on the West Coast of the US started growing it
in the early 1900’s.
Broccoli is usually green in color, though there is also a
purple variety. It has fleshy flower heads, arranged in a tree-like fashion on
branches sprouting from a thick, edible stalk. The large mass of flower heads
is surrounded by leaves.
The United States is the
world's largest producer of broccoli. California, Arizona, Texas, and Oregon
are the leading broccoli-producing states in the US where most of it is harvested
and sold as fresh produce. Broccoli is also grown on a large scale in Italy,
northern Europe, and the Far East.
Broccoli is a cool season
crop so it is available in early spring and also in the fall so its one of the
earliest fresh vegetables in the spring and one of the latest in the fall – In
fact, in California fresh broccoli is available at Farmer’s markets from
October – May as much of the broccoli crop is grown in the cool and sometimes
foggy coastal areas.
Broccoli can be eaten raw
or cooked. People are sometimes put off by the sulfurous smell of cooking
broccoli but if you smell that it means that you have OVERCOOKED it!
In fact the best way to eat
broccoli is steamed for 5 minutes. Anything over 7 minutes and the color
changes to a drab and unappetizing olive green.
Broccoli is high in
vitamins A and C and rich in fiber. To learn more about broccoli
