When I talk about old recipes someone always asks me if I like poke salad. I’ve only eaten it once or twice in my life. Pap and Granny didn’t care for it and never fixed it when I was growing up. Pap said “The only way I’ll ever eat poke salad is if I had to like when I was a boy because there wasn’t anything else.”
Pap and Granny loved other greens, just not poke salad. The times I tasted it I didn’t care for it either, but I’ve always wanted to try cooking it and see if I could suit myself better.
John Parris who wrote about the mountain ways of Western North Carolina had a good article about polk salad. I’ll share a bit of it with you.
Mountain women begin picking poke as soon as the young sprouts shoot out of the ground in the spring, and they keep right on picking it and serving it until the sprouts grow old and tough.
Some of them like Mrs. Elvie Corn who lives here on Dodgin Creek in the hills above Cullowhee, have been picking poke since they were kneehigh to a duck. Mrs. Corn has been searching it out and picking it for more the 50 years.
“Poke is best,” she said a couple of days ago, “when the sprouts are white and tender with just a little tuft of green leaves at the top. But you’ve got to pick it with a sparing hand. The root is a deadly poison. And if you get too much of the lower part of the shoot it’ll give a body a fit when they eat it.”
She had just come in from picking a mess of poke sallet from the field back of her house.
“There’s different ways of fixing poke,” she said. “I’ve never seen any written recipes for it. I learned how to fix it from my mother and my grandmother. But all of it has got to be cooked. First, you’ve got to parboil it. I boil mine three times. That get’s out any poison there might be. With the first boiling, the water turns red. You pour that off, put in fresh water and boil it again. And then you pour that off, put in water again and boil it a third time. You can serve the sallet as it comes out of the pot. Eat it with vinegar poured over it. But the way I like it best is to take it when it comes out of the pot, cut it up, put it in a greased frying pan with eggs and stir it all together.”
“Another way to fix poke is to take it after you’ve parboiled it and cut it up and roll it in cornmeal and fry it like you would okra. It’s mighty tasty, too, if you’ll chop it up with onions and fry it with bacon or fat-back drippings.”
I told her that my wife cooks poke like asparagus and serves it with hot Hollandaise sauce.
Mrs. Corn recalled that as a child all the old folks warned her to be mighty particular about picking poke too close to the root. “They said if you ate the root it would kill you. But my grandmother used to get the roots and boil them until they were tender and then sprinkle cornmeal on them and put them out for the chickens to peck on. She claimed it was good for them.”
—John Parris Mountain Cooking
Granny’s awful picky about most things so I can see why she didn’t care for poke when she was growing up. She said her mother and her sister Fay and her husband Woodrow were just crazy about it. Granny said every spring of the year they’d gather it by the bucket full and hurry home and cook it. She said “Oh they’d go on and on about it but I didn’t care a bit for it.”
Last night’s video: Getting Granny’s Garden Ready for Her Birthday.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Thank you for the article. Just wanted to say that there is a typo: “polk” vs. “poke”
I learned from my father to only pick poke when it’s no taller than knee high – leaves and top of stem are tender. I sometimes cook it with crumbled sausage. As a little girl I had great fun making pokeberry ink to draw treasure maps. Of course I drew it with a feather. My hands were purple too.
I enjoy the young Polk salad leaves cooked with scrambled eggs. My granny used to fix it and I thought it was delicious prepared that way.
We ate Poke Salad all our lives. It loves to grow around old Barns and sheds. You can deep fry small tender stalks. You should only eat small tender leaves. We cooked it in hot pork grease with scrambled eggs. Moma always used it to clean out our systems. lol It worked. We 10 were never very sick.
Never as poke salad but I’ve picked it for my grandma ask granny as bout creasy greens
I have never had poke salad, but I would give it a try. Seems like my grandparents may have eaten something like that when I was very young. Everything is worth trying like my grandpa said… “Columbus took a chance and that turned out all right.”
I have been watching y’all on you tube for over a month now and I can’t stop watching! I feel like y’all are my family. I love watching you coook and love the meals y’all eat. And growing your own food is the best. My dad all my growing up years had a garden till he died, he had a garden and grew the best tomatoes ever. He grew tomatoes the size of a dinner plate.
Love hearing about raising twins. I have twins. They are 50! Boy and girl. When they were born, I had a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Girl and boy. Our 3 year old boy passed away from cancer at age 7.
The twins were 3 when he passed away and they hardly remember him. My husband has dementia and I am mostly home bound with him, so I watch a lot of YouTube. Especially y’all. Thanks
Lynda-Thank you for the lovely comment. I’m so glad you enjoy what we do. We really appreciate your support.
Thank you for sharing a bit about your family. I’m so sorry you lost your young son to cancer. And I’m sorry your husband has dementia. I will pray for him and for you too!
Wonderful that you had twins too!!
Started picking poke with my Mama when I was little and have continued to pick, cook, and eat it all my life.
I wonder if Elvis Corn is related to Opal Corn?
I don’t know what poke greens look like, so I’m pretty sure I’ve never had it. My mom would go up the hallow my uncle lived in WV to pick dandelion greens when we visited, but I don’t recall her ever talking about poke greens. I doubt if I’d like them either. I only liked the greens my mom cooked up. I never learned to cook any greens since my husband doesn’t eat any cooked greens. He use to like ramps, but doesn’t eat them now. We basically now just eat fresh salad greens.
Growing up I went out with my granny and picked poke. We’d just take the top leaves but there was plenty enough sprouting around the place that we’d always end up with a pot full. Granny boiled it three times and served it up with dishes of pickled onions and bacon on the side. We’d choose for ourselves what we wanted on it and that way it suited our tastes. Sometimes she would fry it in bacon grease if we were short on bacon. It was so good.
I know/knew people that eat/ate it. I tried it once as kid, but don’t remember much about it other than it was in scrambled eggs. This article I found from the Chef Forager says about everything I know or have ever heard about Poke Salat and more. Poke Salat is toxic (some parts of the plant are more poison than others) in it’s natural state and their is a “right way” to prepare it before eating.
https://foragerchef.com/pokeweed/
There are lots of pictures online if one searches for “American pokeberry pictures”. However, all the ones I saw were of the mature plant. It is easily recognizable but is definitely not what is picked to eat. It is picked when shoots are about one foot high or less. A good way to make its springtime acquaintance is to locate mature plants in summer and revisit in spring.
As many times as I’ve gathered and cooked the leaves, I never knew you could eat the tender shoots. I’ve learned something new today. Thanks
I wouldn’t know poke if I tripped over it. I’d love to make your kilt lettuce recipe. It always looks so good when you make it! Happy spring! ☮️
I have eaten poke salad all my life and love it, my favorite way of eating it is fried cause it tastes like okra to me.
Nothing is more frustrating than “auto correct “…..ugh!! Polk..not pork.
Good morning everyone from central Oklahoma!! Sun is out and it’s feeling better than ever.
Grew up eating pork. Nothing is better than cleaning the polks tender shoots and cooking them at the same time with scrambled eggs!! Awesome taste. Packed full of iron. We can still find them by old wood from fallen trees.
Sounds like a good breakfast with a piece of sourdough bread!! Yummy.
Tipper, thank you for all you do!!
Hugs and kisses to Granny and Happy Birthday…few days late. Granny is looking beautiful as always .
🙂 Tipper – yesterdays post arrived this morning – just now actually – but since I already commented after searching and finding it yesterday, I will just add- I did look up the information about this Poke plant, but still think I will NOT be looking for it to try! Do you have this plant growing in your area and do you pick & eat it?
Wanita-we do have it growing here but don’t eat it 🙂
Good morning. I not only pick poke and eat it… I can it. To can it: cook three times and pour off the water just like John said in his recipe. Then fill up your pint jars and pressure can for one half hour. It will be a lot like cooked spinach. You can season however you like. Bacon grease, butter, salt and pepper.
I’ve never eaten poke salad before but I’ve heard my mom mention it. I don’t think she cared for it either.
Daddy always talked about eating poke salad but Mama, a city girl, never served it in our home. But when my son was two years old, he got into poke berries! I knew they were poisonous & called poison control. They said they had received numerous calls about children eating them but not to worry. The berries were bitter & my son surely didn’t eat enough to harm him. I felt like such a bad mother to have let that happen! Thanks for sharing Tipper!
When I was a kid, I remember my Mother and my aunt would pick and cook poke, and they really enjoyed it. I’ll join in with the other commenters: it would be great if Paul would sing “Poke Salad Annie” for us!
I didn’t get my email this morning either, but I never do. It’s been probably ten years, maybe more, since I got an email. But, I always find my way here. It ain’t that hard. I have http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com in my favorites. I click on it, I hit refresh, it changes from yesterday to today’s post and I’m good to go.
I don’t always comment when I first read the post. The more it makes me think and remember the later in the day I might comment. Today I thought of something I thought might make somebody laugh and decided to make a second comment but messed up and made it a reply to someone else’s comment.
It’s still funny but is a little out of place.
I’ve never eaten poke myself but my grandmother and her sister tried it once and ended up in the emergency room. I don’t think they ever tried it again. I’ve seen lots of comments about not getting your email today. I also didn’t get it and immediately thought maybe granny was sick. So glad she is ok and hopefully The Blind Pig will show up tomorrow.
Fried poke sallat. Momma spoke of the hunt often. She said they were so hungry for greens come spring they hunted all over them mountains. Thanks for sharing!
I like poke salad however you spell it. But that turns out to be once or twice a year. Not worth the cooking hardly just for me. I didn’t get your post either today.
For some reason, I didn’t get today’s blog post in my email. I read it by clicking forward from Sunday’s. Hopefully, it’s just a glitch. I just take my daily Blind Pig and the Acorn seriously and don’t want to miss out.
I grew up eating it and loved it. We ‘d pick it when less than a foot tall. Wash it well, bill it 2-3 times, draining after each time, then season with bacon grease and cider vinegar. The old folks said it was spring tonic and high in iron. One of my mom’s sisters discovered late in life that she was allergic to it.
I absolutely LOVE Poke!My family grew up cooking it with eggs and to me you just can’t beat it!I remember one time my Nana had fixed spinach and eggs together at Thanksgiving and Everybody asked her”Where did Poke Sallet this time of the year”?She just smiled and said”Popeye Spinach”!
I did not receive my BP&A email this morning either , glad to be able to hop over here & see that all is well . I’d probably pass on the poke salad , also, but I enjoy learning about it & how resourceful people were / are . Thank you for sharing! Love & Blessings to all !
I’ve never eaten poke, would like to try it.
I love turnip and mustard greens, spinach and collards.
I never ate poke salad, but I liked the song about Annie, who apparently did. I’d love to hear Paul’s rendition of that one.
I watch Doyle Dykes’ Sunday String Along. On yesterday’s show he wished Miss Louzine a happy birthday and mention the whole Wilson/Pressley clan.
I would like to hear Paul sing that one too! Poke Salad Annie.
Tipper I didn’t get my email this morning. I had to go back to yesterday to get today’s.
Good day Tipper – for some reason the email for BP&A didn’t arrive this morning so I had to go looking. Just what a ‘poke’ for salad is eludes me as to what it looks or tastes like…what it might be similar to. Do you have a picture? I must admit it does not sound tempting to try, when one has to be so careful in regards to it being poisonous! It was wonderful to see Granny out ‘inspecting’ you & Matts readying of her garden. 🙂 May it be bountiful and she enjoy many a meal from what gets grown there. Happy week to you all!
Poke is bad to grow good around outhouses. Come to think of it I’ve never seen anybody gather it from near one. I never wondered why until now. Was it the smell coming off the outhouse that steered them away? Or maybe it had an offal taste? It’s food for thought!
I’ve heard of poke salad but never have eaten any. Turnip salad has always been my favorite, and I also like spinach, but the family favorite is collard greens.
I know Granny is excited about her garden. It was so nice to see her out and I do hope her garden does well for her this year. She is one tough lady and continued prayers for her every day.
My parents and siblings ate poke sallet in the spring. I refused to eat it or any other green. However, I loved eating the stems of pokeweed cut in medallions and fried like okra.
Mommy would gather it when it first appeared, before the leaf buds began to open. Like when it first “poked” through the ground. She trimmed off (or snapped off) any semblance of red color on the stem as well as the bud. The stem would be white or a very pale green. She sliced them across the grain in ½ inch pieces, coated them in seasoned corn meal, and fried them in hot grease.
If you like fried okry, you’ll love fried poke!
Just to let you know – your email never made it to us here and we got worried about Granny.
Praying all is okay at your house.
Good morning. I have never eaten poke salad, nor did my parents ever pick or cook it. My father-in-law loved dandelion greens and picked those to eat often. Hubby and I love all kinds of salads and all kinds of greens purchased at the grocery store. We grow lots of lettuce and some kale. It was so sweet of you and Matt to till up your Mama’s garden and plant her onions, radishes and lettuce. That’s a fine birthday gift. It was so nice to see Granny come outside to enjoy seeing her gift in person. Hugs and prayers for her.
I’ve heard the name, but never remember eating it.
Ya’ll did such a great job on Granny’s garden. It was so good to see her out and about. Praying for her. Love ya’ll so much.
I have never ate poke sallet, not salad in my neck of the woods. My family did not eat it when I was growing up. I do love turnip greens, but not the turnips. Again my family just call them sallet. We often ate them cooked with backbone ribs, cornbread, and a baked sweet potato for our supper. Kinda like Pap said, you ate whatever was on the table or went hungry. There were no meals for picky eaters when I was growing up and nothing bought at restaurants.