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Are you growing purslane yet (I mean, deliberately)? Its claims to fame are split, 50-50: invasive weed versus superfood. As the latter, it is delicious, and it hollers of summer. Browsing my photograph archives recently, I found bunches of purslane being sold at the Union Square greenmarket in Manhattan for $2 in 2018; in 2011, they were being sold for $2 per pound. Last week I bought loose, perfect purslane stems from my local Brooklyn farmers’ market. They were $20 for a quarter pound. I laughed out loud. But I bought some, because I don’t grow it. Luckily, you don’t need much purslane to benefit from this summer annual’s juicy, omega-3-rich fatty leaves, and their succulent crunch. And if you have weeded the uninvited plant from your garden beds and are now snickering at a person foolish enough pay for purslane, just simmer down and be thankful that you have at hand a plant whose nutritional numbers may silence dissent.
To some people, purslane is essential. It was lauded by the Romans. And, in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them, a novel I’m reading, set in a 14th century English convent during the Black Death, a nun laments: “It is bad enough to be without a priest. Surely we need not be without purslane.”
Aside from its tremendously high levels of fatty acids, including omega-3‘s, purslane (Portulaca oleracea) also contains Vitamins A, C, and E, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and melatonin. It has been studied for its antidepressant effects, as well as for its neuroprotective qualities, with positive results.
Now, is it worth $20 for a quarter pound? The minute you put a price on something, the sticker shock can make people sit up and take it seriously for the first time.
At the same market where it was selling for $20/quarter pound, a man asked me with friendly interest, How do you eat purslane? I started rattling off the ways: raw, in salads; raw, with flaky salt; raw in tomato sandwiches; pickled; cooked slowly with lamb; cooked in vegetable curry. He looked a little surprised. He didn’t buy any. Maybe I was overzealous. Or maybe he had a gardenful at home. I hope so.
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