Milkweed Pods

I just learned that milkweed is a delicious edible plant, thanks to Samual Thayer's book called The Forager's Harvest. Milkweed - that I just pulled tons out of from the garden because it was taking over the raspberry bushes and gets super tall, but is so pretty with it's bright green stalks and flowery bunches and big pods. Each fall I take a client or two on a river walk and we look for milkweed pods to open up so we can feel the soft seeds inside.

Collect the tiny seed pods to eat

And it turns out milkweed is edible in lots of ways: the early small shoots, the flowers (are apparently the best), immature pods, and the seeds. I missed the previous two (though some shoots are still coming up in the garden, so maybe I'll try them), but I tried some seed pods last week. They had a nice texture and tasted almost like chewy green beans - maybe a little okra-esque, but not slimy.

While biking from the northside homestead to my house on Sunday, My Charming Companion and I gathered a bunch of mini pods along the Mississippi. They are starting to get too big already - but you want to seek out pods that are just an inch or 1 1/4" long. That is pretty small since the pods get to about 4". There are often 4-8 pods on a plant, so the collecting is pretty quick work, though you do get sticky "milk sap" on your hands from picking them.

Apparently milkweed pods get tough and hard pretty quickly once picked, so you will want to eat them within a day or two of picking them. I wanted to eat them very simply this first time, so just sauteed/steamed the pods with water and a little fat, and used only salt for seasoning. They were really good.

The seeds inside the immature pods

Here you can see the seeds from an immature pod. When the pods are bigger than 1 1/4" you can eat the seeds - apparently cooking them in water creates a cheesy sort of sauce. I haven't tried it yet, but sounds interesting.

I put the pods in a cast iron skillet with some bacon fat, and turned the burner on medium. They sucked up the fat right away (like eggplant does), so I added some water and put a cover on the pan. They sucked that up too so I added more until they seemed able to steam and saute just a bit. The total cook time was about 5 minutes. Putting them in boiling water for 5 minutes would also work.

Here are the finished, sauteed pods. Sprinkle with salt and eat!