OK, so I’ve gotten hooked on a farm video blog #theveggieboys and I just watched them harvest broccoli. Slice the stem, strip away the leaves and you have grocery store broccoli. But those leaves look very tasty. Maybe prepared like collards or mixed greens, boiled down with a ham hock or smoked turkey neck, served with pepper vinegar.
Anybody ever done this? What do they taste like? Or are the leaves only fit for animal feed?
The whole broccoli plant is edible, although the outer stems and thicker leaves are going to be too tough and stringy to be appetizing. You can eat those leaves raw or cooked.
Biologically, broccoli leaves essentially are collard greens – they’re separate cultivars of the same species (brassica oleracea). Other cultivars of b. oleracea include cabbage, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, Savoy cabbage and kohlrabi.