How to Clean, Prepare and Cook Sunchokes 

I'm growing Sunchokes for the first time this year. They grow like crazy! I'm looking forward to harvesting them as I need them. Thanks for the video!

just harvested 10 lbs, very labour intensive, and that's only 10% of my yard. I almost regret buying them tubers and planting them 3 years ago. Endless supply, talk about a renewable, native, sustainable, no work free food source.

My wife and I owned a restaurant and we tried to treat everyone well but most people think you are abusing them when you expect them to come to work on time. After people left us and went to work elsewhere they came back by occasionally and told us how nice we had treated them and how much they missed our family. I’m looking forward to cooking some sun chokes at the end of this growing season. We planted them last year and I just left them. The deer did nibble them some but they seemed to survive. If it was good to keep Lewis and Clark alive it should be good for us!

Thanks for the info and experience. Hoping more people will start thinking locally grown and produced and shared... this is vital for what's coming. Keep up the good work!

I was just introduced to sunchokes. They are a great food for the international shortages we are experiencing. Thanks for the instruction in cooking them.

I blast them with the garden hose as soon as I harvest and it works great.

Amen! I have 40 years in professional kitchens. People do treat you like crap, from management on down to do-workers. Was a pastry person when I started. Over the years I have done everything! Now I work for the oilfields in Alaska

The main question I had was exactly how to clean them, so thank you for showing that important first step!

I'm harvesting my Jerusalem artichokes currently (December '22). I was wondering if there were any faster ways to clean them up, but it seems not! Worth the effort though. I cut mine into small slices, season a little and throw it into an airfryer for about 15-20 minutes, and it's delicious. I've also just harvested my oca (Oxalis tuberosa) today, and they're delicious too, and store a long time. I find with the sunchokes I have to eat them pretty quickly after harvesting or they go bad.... Before my neighbour passed away a few years ago, he told me how he lived through the food shortages during WWII by surviving on sunchokes, and feeding his animals with it so they'd survive the hard winter months.

Thank you for acknowledging how difficult working in a restaurant is and how more often than not consumers are not nice. 100% truth

Tried a sample at the Saturday market today, didn't know what they were. The guy had chopped them up and drizzled them with olive oil and roasted them lightly in his small toaster oven. Wow, bought 2lb. Food of the week, month, year for me. Amazing artichoke heart/sweet potato flavor with a bit of radish finish. Amazing.

I emailed the video you did just previous to this one (digging sunchokes) to several friends up and down the road and one of them emailed back to say she already had them growing at her place so I went up this afternoon and she let me dig up a bunch of them. I made a batch of bean soup and I fried up some sunchokes with my own onions and garlic then I put them in the stock pot with the simmering white beans and homegrown kale, parsnips, sage and parsley as well as some store bought carrots, celery, and ham. It's still simmering downstairs but it tastes good. My neighbour is going to let me dig some sunchoke tubers up next spring to transplant along a rock island in the field next to my house so that I can have my own nearby source. Thanks for these 2 sunchoke videos; they reminded me to try them out.

Thank you! I like your style of thinking. (I subscribed)

Thanks for these thorough instructions! We have kept our topinamburs (sunchokes) in our family garden for several generations. Mine are not quite as big as these in your video, but tasty! We love them here in South Louisiana and prepare them very similar to the way you have in this video, but brown meat such as chicken or pork chops or andouille first with our onions and garlic, then braise our topinamburs until they are mushy. We serve over rice, of course! Ce Cest Bon! Fresh is BEST!

I just found out I've been growing these all over my property just for the flowers! I had no idea what I had! Thanks for this tutorial!

Nicely done! I totally understand your reason for not continuing in the restaurant industry. I was a chef at a rather nice restaurant in San Diego and we had hollywood elite come through on their way back from Mexico and to have their face there, they would eat and to get their meal for free, they trashed me and other chefs. I lasted 5 months and told them where to put their game. So, in a new area and am looking to grow more of the chokes and enjoy once again. Thank you for posting.

Slow cook for 12+ hours or ferment to convert the inulin. I highly recommend the slow cook method. The inulin turns into a digestible sugar and it tastes/smells amazing!!

So cool. Thank you! I'm impressed with how you main gained your focus throughout and so kept my own focus! Looking guard to growing these now.

It blows my mind how expensive precut vegetables and fruits are. You can buy like 10 small chunks of watermelon for the same price as a WHOLE watermelon

Thanks for all your videos, they are inspiring for me to try new( to me vegetables) and cooking techniques! Living in California it’s nice to see some snow :)

Awesome. Thank you for posting.

Another great one, Thanks. My sunchokes should arrive in March to plant. And next winter I will try this for sure.

Thank you for your reply. It is good to know it isn't just me with the problem. It just occurred to me that mashing them and cooking them twice might help. Mexicans cook beens twice to remove the gas. Refritos literally means "refried".

I've been growing Jerusalem artichokes for 3 years. I've not really eaten many yet, but I'll harvest these this autumn and winter, and store them in food grade buckets with sand or soil. I'll be gifting many of them too. I'll leave 10% in the ground for next spring. My Jerusalem artichokes are now 10½ foot tall in early September. They'll reach 14ft tall by the end of the growing season.

Nice a new recipe. I do like them raw also, enjoy the nutty taste.

Never tried one... whao...cool. Thanks for sharing.

Just harvested a bunch today and I am looking forward to trying your recipe.

Looks delicious! Can't wait to grow mine next season:)

very kind of you to show all the detail

I end up with several 5 gallon buckets of these each fall.. I find that the pressure of the garden hose gets most of the crud flushed out. Try cubing them and roasting on a cookie sheet in the oven once tossed with coconut oil and sprinkle crushed curry leaves and sea salt. YUM.

Great recipe Greg! Love the tip for the knife also. Can’t wait to try it next year when I grow mine. I think I’ll try to roasting at the end too. I can’t believe you threw the bowl over 😂.

You legit made me hysterically laugh with the water toss! Merry Christmas to you and yours, and I will be making this about next year this time. I bought some of those rarer red sunchoke varieties, so had to propagate them this year. Still have not tasted a single sunchoke in my life, neither has my SO.

Very nice video. I love ❤️ them and grow lots of them.

Yeay! These are easy to buy round my way, but we almost always include them in potato mash or turn them into soup. Going to add them to the 'oven roasted' veg next time. My thanks, you do a great job of bringing a new experience, and learning to people.

Im glad that I cam up to your channel. I just had sunchokes in my garden. and were seeking for some good recipe.. all best

I like the jazzy jazz mixed up with the flavor! Thanks, I want to eat the sunchokes.

Looks great!

Wow this guy is really tall!! Thanks for the detailed advice on how to prep and cook sunchokes! It is exactly the info I needed.

Paint brush with swirling motion cleans them well.

Thank you for the recipe I will make today .

It looks very nice and easy! Here comes the fragrance! That's how I make mushrooms, sweet potatoes and some other vegetables. Perfect!!!

Great video, thank you.

Love this video!! You have a great sense of humour!!! From a Canadian!

8:39 An apple cutter is perfect for cutting them into same size pieces. The kind ya you use to split an apple in one go.

I scrubbed em up with a vegetable brush.. sometimes a scrubber sponge works. Gonna try em tonight for the first time!

My mother used to boiled them until they come tender . She used to pinch them with the fork until it will go in . Then she dressed them with some olive oil and herbs like fennel seeds and mint . They are so good . The problem they need a lot of time to prepare them . 😂

Interesting video. I have not had sun chokes but was told that if I got any I had to boil twice so you wouldn’t get gassy. I would like to try this.

I do want to try these.

Buy you a peeler that has the little scoop on it. The scoop is for digging the eyes out of potatoes, bruised areas, or digging out things just like you were showing... but with minimal loss to edible parts.

Thanks for sharing, suggestions for washing these is to use small kitchen brush or tooth brush. All the best.

2:50 A stiff boot brush or something similar works as well.

I always thought I had to peel them. Thank you for removing the stress from sunchoke prep!

Good job! Well done

So I made these tonight for the first time after picking some up at my local farmers market. I just sautéed them in a cast iron pan like you did but probably cooked them for about 15 minutes moving them around occassionally without ever covering them until they felt somewhat soft. They tasted really good and some bigger pieces still had a little crispness to them. They seem like a great healthier substitute for potatoes but the only downside is now I'm gassy as all get out! Maybe cooking them longer like you did will prevent that.

Love him!

I'm fixing to plant a crop of these. I've got thoughts on the cleaning process and I've got the materials to do it. I'm just gonna make a large tumbler and use something smaller than pea gravel and do it all in a 50gallon poly drum where the mud can leak out

I've boughton sunchoke pasta. Delicious.

Im doing it today, ta da da ta da da , thanks for showing Teecha:)

so glad I found your channel :)

I've been growing Jerusalem artichokes for many years, but have never harvested any. Thanks, maybe I'll get brave now that I have an idea of what to do with them!

That’s a great strategy to handle Sunchokes

I like that you threw the pan over the rail to,thats funny.I have to say I have never tried them,being a chef you would think I would have cooked every thing.I had thought that there is a wild sunchoke.Enjoyed the video,yes food service can be brutal,but some times I miss it.Dont miss the 14 hour days though.

Looks great…Im gonna try growing/cooking.

"They're done when they're soft." True for all vegetables. ;-)

You should see the stuff I fire off my deck...for the crows.....chicken and turkey carcasses after making stock, (they don't like the veg), etc...it's fun to gather around and watch how they convene...very smart birds, they call each other and seem to have a hierarchy

Thanks for the tips. We have 3 patches this year, our first year growing JA. Does your method of sauteeing then cooking on the stove reduce the inulin? Thanks.

Yay! I’m so glad you did a video on these! I’ve only just heard of these vegies and only know what I’ve learned from you! Thanks again Greg!!

Garden hose on high pressure/jet setting as you harvest is best/quickest/easiest way to clean. The water jet gets in all the little nooks and crannies.

Watched you throw the dirty water in the yard, I washed mine out side with the hose and the next year they were growing there, these things grow like a weed. easiest plant to grow for a lazy farmer or if you have trouble growing plants. this year we had an early snow and very cold weather, didn't get all of them dug up hope it gets warm again before the deep freeze.

It also best to use for pickle, with organic with vinegar.

My neighbour gave me some of these tubers last week from his garden and suggested I try them.

This made me laugh so hard. Our order of sunchokes arrived today from Hope Seeds, and my mother was very skeptical about what they were and why I had ordered them. I showed her a video from OYR, and then from MI Gardener, then said "On the off chance, I wonder if Maritime Gardening has something...."and OF COURSE you have a 30 min podcast about this rare vegetable, and of COURSE you are the only person who has bothered to show how they are actually cooked and how to clean them. Thank you so much!!

I tried grow them thus yr.i did in container yo control. Iam in s txgave thrm eorser soil i had thy only grew 3 feet. So i didn't expect much of havest. In reality our 3 mo of 100's i don't water much if anything i mulch bed heavy, plant sweet potatoes slips and come back in july for next batch of tomatoes. The havest was so little i just keep everything for seed in spring

I've got three varieties. I've made picture-based ID on them so take this with a shaker of salt as many varieties look just like others, or else they're the same tuber with different names; Stampede(?) is a white/tan very knobby tuber under a 6'+ top. They have an earthy, veggie, potatoey flavor and the flowers are tender enough to toss in salads. The flowers taste a bit stronger than the tubers. The flowers can be boiled or steamed and resemble squash. With a bit of butter, YUMM! They are cousins of the annual Sunflower after all. Red Fescue(?) is a red skinned slightly knobby tuber, white inside with a more pronounced nutty flavor than Stampede. The tops are 7'+ and the flowers aren't as tender, but boil/steam well. Fuseau(?) is a white/tan carrot sized and shaped tuber, very easy to clean. They have a strong turnipy potatoey flavor, strong enough that when you cook them the smell rolls through the whole house. In roasts, soups and stews just a few go a long way, just like turnips. A friend of ours in Tasmania remembers her mother cooking with Fuseau and smelling up the house! These have a 12' top and make great late summer privacy screens. These flowers are super tough and a bit tough even when boiled. I've used the flower broth to make wine and it's pretty good. There are four ways to convert the Inulin to Fructose and lose the gas; In zone 5, after a long winter freeze, they get so sweet they're like eating candy out of the dirt! Extended freezing works, don't just toss a batch in your freezer for a day or two, it takes a while. Fermenting. Use any sauerkraut recipe, let them work and then let them rest after you freeze or can. Time is of the ... essence ... pardon the gas pun, whatever method you use. Kimchi is one I'm itching to try. Cooking for an extended time as in a crockpot or slow cooker for several hours. The Native Americans made pit fires, covered the coals with dirt, then layered on the 'chokes, covered them with more dirt and let them cook for hours before uncovering. Cooking in an acid such as vinegar or citric acid. This will shorten the above cooking time, but it still takes a bit of time for the acid to work. We can the majority of ours as pickles and we prefer them to cukes. The vinegar in the pickle mixes does the trick and the gas is gone. There is a fifth way to avoid the gas and that's to take a daily Inulin supplement. I do, and I can dig up a mess of 'chokes as soon as the tops die, tear into them raw and not have much if any of a gas reaction. Two years ago I chipped and dried some Stampede and made flour in a food processor. It's like Buckwheat flour, you have to mix it with other flour to lighten the texture and if you want it to rise, you have to mix it with wheat flour. I plan on boiling, mashing and drying some to see if I get instant 'choke flakes. It seems that whatever you can do with any other veggies you can do with 'chokes. They are just about the most versatile veggie I've ever seen. Very long term storage by drying is probably the best way other than layering in containers with sand, sawdust or dirt in a below 50°F temperature area. 50°F and above is what triggers them into sprouting, so keep them well below 50°F and moderately moist but not wet. Friends of ours harvest the leaves and trim off up to the top half of the tender stalks and feed their rabbits. They don't take any more than half of the stalk early in the summer as that tends to affect the tuber growth. The 'chokes don't just spread like weeds, they're allelopathic. That means that like Walnut trees, they spread a chemical that retards germination and spreading of competitors like grasses and weeds. That also means they aren't compatible with other types of 'chokes. When I first got the Red Fescue I mixed them in an established patch of Stampede. The Reds didn't do well at all, they were small, didn't multiply well and didn't look healthy. I separated some Reds and put them in a patch by themselves. Mowing a 3' border around the patches keeps them well contained. Don't toss the stalks into a general mulch pile! Any bit of tuber or stolen will spread those suckers to wherever you spread that mulch!! Mulch the stalks by themselves or do as I do. I got a small electric chipper and as I pull the dead dry stalks I chip and spread them over the patch. Later when I grab the sod fork and start digging for the deeper ones I mix the stalk chips into the dirt where they came from. The Algonquin Native Americans grew them all over in my area. There are dozens of patches in town and outside of town and who knows how many other varieties. The Algonquin name for them is Kaishúcpenauk.

Another water over the deck thrower here too..You've got me wanting to try these, the simpler to grow the better, I was wondering while you were slicing all the odd bits off, would they regrow in the soil or do they need to be a full size root/rhizome? just a thought..

Oh wow! I just found this video!!! Where can I get these to plant and grow and eat??? Also, I'm in Bedford, Virginia, near Lynchburg. Will they grow in my area?!

Just found your channel and subscribed! These are growing in my side yard, but I've been afraid to eat them. I was told they cause painful gas and bloating. Do you find that to be true? Is that just if you eat them raw? Thanks.

My first year with sunchokes on PEI. I was told to wait for a few hard frosts to harvest, for best results (which can take a long time here). Can I harvest before?

Yum! We boil ours before we fry them..helps to eliminate the "gas" it produces..lol 😍

PS, I'm going to set up a sort of cinder block, "washing station" using a sturdy plastic crate like they use for bakery goods in the grocery store, that way 99% of the soil stays in the garden with a quick hose spray. Just thought you and your wife might like the idea. ;)

Mine are smooth, white and long (not roundish) so they are easier to wash. Perhaps you can consider growing a different specie of JA? Fuseau?

great video, as usual...I noticed you are using cast iron on your ceramic cooktop...I was told I couldn't use them or it would scratch the ceramic...I have lots of cast iron, so no way I wasn't going to use them...my husband sanded the bottoms so they would be smoother....I use them every day...

I'm just learning about this plant. It's fascinating! You did a great job processing and cooking them. Do you feel that the plant is invasive? In other words, does it spread all over the place? I know kudzu has been a real problem in the deep south.

I just harvested mine for the year, any tips on how to store the tubers indoors? I'm moving this winter/spring so I can't leave them in the ground if I want to take them with me.

Great show! I miss these, they're delicious, but hard to find - at least, to buy in this neck of the woods. And I can relate to driving one's wife nuts. The sun rises, then it sets - and blokes drive their old ladies crazy, it's a law of nature.

I dried sunchok and make tea. People said it is very good for controlling blood sugar.

Yummy - however, I think the ease with which the dirt comes off depends on what kind of soil they're growing in. I let mine grow in areas that I don't care about their taking over and haven't really spent much energy amending, as I know they'll grow in anything. I have been working on it as no-till for a few years now, but still that part of my yard has dough-like clay, and it is NOT a quick thing to remove it from the chokes. Lots of scrubbing with a brush. And mine, if not completely smooth, have lots of little divets (not just folds like yours) where dirt loves to gather. I find I have to make a lot of cuts to each of them to get to the dirt. But when I have the time to do that, they're definitely worth it.

This is my first harvesting of sunchokes,any idea how to conserve them and keep them over the winter ?!I will try your recipe!thanx

Ultrasonic Cleaner works wonders :)

OK, before you cook or even grow sunchokes there is something you absolutely MUST know about them. Everyone knows that eating beans will cause intestinal gas. That occurs because beans contain about 3% of a starch that we can't digest, but our intestinal bacteria can, which produces the gas. Well, sunchokes also contain that kind of starch. Only... , sunchokes contain 97% of that starch. This is a quantity of intestinal gas of EPIC proportions! if you are fine with that, then OK. But if you are not, well, you have been warned!

i watched this several years ago and watching again as i dream of garden 2024 as that as my sickness. How many plants did it take to produce that much?

Harvest in the spring, overwintered, and the "gas effect" will be eliminated. God Bless.

I have an old tooth brush that I use to clean veggies.

Love mine raw. Crunchy. But cook them too.

Is there a reason you don't just spray the dirt off the roots in the garden? Thank you.

Everyone I know who has tried these say the gas they give a person is horrendous. Anyone know how to mitigate this?

Fry your spices?never heard of that.thankyou

I just got some sunchokes from a neighbor and they are very small and thin, not like those or the pictures I am seeing. How do I find out if they are the right thing.

I have some I am going to cook I haven’t tasted them yet

You could add lardons and a bay leaf.