December 17, 2025 • 26 mins
This leafy green is a mild, tender cousin of cabbage that goes by many names. Anney and Lauren dig into the science and history of bok choy.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm any Reason and I'm Lauren vogel Baum, and today
we have an episode for you about bok Choi.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, any particular reason this was on your mind, born.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I was thinking about vegetation, okay, fruits, fruits and vegetables.
I was looking for something that is nice and seasonal
for the winter and realized that we have not done
back choi yet.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Nope, we have not, but we have done a lot
of past episodes related to bok choy.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, many cousins, radishes, bsabi, horse, radish, mustard, arugalala. Those
are just the ones that I thought of off the
top of my head. I'm sure there's others.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yes, yes, there are. I do love bock choy too.
I usually use it in soups, and I have to
admit it was kind of a newer acquisition in my
cooking of it. I'd had it at restaurants previously, but
me cooking it, but it's so nice, Yeah, yeah, it's
(01:19):
it's really it's such a delightful vegetable.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
My very favorite Chinese place in town High or urban
High does a stir fry that's just bock choi with
tofu skin just in this really like light ginger garlic,
sesame sauce or like almost like a broth kind of
and it's just so nice and light and tender, and
(01:45):
oh it's so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'll have to check that out because I love tofu
skin as well.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yes, it's just it's just a whole dish full of
these like wonderful, delicate, kind of silky textures. And I'm like, yes,
thank you. How did you know.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Exactly what I needed? Okay, Well, good recommendation. Well, I
guess that brings us to our question, sure, bockchoi?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
What is it? Well? Back Choi is a type of
leafy green vegetable that grows in clusters or heads of
leaves that are each relatively smooth and flat, each with
a big, broad, juicy rib that'll be white to pale
green in color, and then a short, wide, rounded blade
of darker green coming up off of that. Like, the
(02:40):
leaves are at least equal parts rib and blade. Yeah,
each leaf is sort of spade shaped. The whole head
can be smaller than a hand or as large as two,
but will generally be mild and vegetable and a little bitter.
Sweet in flavor with maybe just a tiny hint of pepperinus.
(03:01):
It's tender and mild enough to be eaten like raw
and a salad. But those big ribs will also retain
a little bit of crunch when cooked, maybe chopped into
a stir fry or simmered into a super stew. Maybe
it's part of a hot pot. The blade part of
the leaves will wilt when heated, but they don't fall
apart and have like a really nice, silky sort of
(03:23):
chew to them. You can also pickle them to preserve them,
or chop them fine for texture and or color, like
as a filling in dumplings or something like that. It's
just a really mild, pretty leafy green. It's like a
it's like a very polite cabbage. Buck Choi makes eating
(03:45):
your greens feel like a treat.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting. It's nice.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
It is so good, okay anyway, oh yeah. Buck Choi
is one of the many cultivars of the species Brassica rappa,
part of the larger mustard family. Different varieties of the
species have been developed for different purposes, including turnips for
their roots, seedy strains for canola oil, and leafy varieties
for things like a big curly leaved Napa cabbage and
(04:15):
smaller smooth leaved bock choi. All of these things that
I just said all count as the same species because
they can all cross fertilize with each other. Bokchoi itself
goes by a lot of different names and spellings of
those names bocchoi, hoc choi choi, some Chinese white cabbage,
(04:37):
or celery cabbage, mustard cabbage, field mustard, spoon cabbage, And
those are just the ones that have taken off English.
There's a bunch more out there, and there's a bunch
of confusion about them.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yay, yep, indeed there is, but we're.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Trying our best, okay. So, Bocchoi grows in subtropical to
temperate environments. It basically prefers like human comfortable temperatures, but
can survive heat and frosts if the weather is nice enough.
It can have like two to three growing seasons a year.
The plant grows roots down to the soil and a
thick stem up into the air, off of which broad
(05:16):
leaves grow in a loose head, each leaf overlapping sort
of like petals on a flower. New leaves come up
from the center of the head, and you can harvest
individual leaves off of the outside of the head, or
just cut the whole head off at the stem. You
typically want to do that after about two months of growth,
when the plant is mature, but before it's sent up
(05:36):
a flower stalk. The flowers are edible too, and can
be used in salads or as a garnish. They're these
tiny little yellow buddies. If pollinated, they will each develop
a small, hard, brown colored fruit that will split open
when the many tiny seeds inside have developed. And yeah,
you can harvest the leaves or the whole head when
(05:58):
they're younger or old. They'll go from sweeter and more
delicate to a little bit more bitter and tougher. But
generally bock choy is pretty like fleshy and crunchy and pleasant.
Bock Choys leaves are like really loosely packed compared to
a lot of its other cabbagee cousins. Well, what about
(06:21):
the nutrition by itself? Back choi is really good for you,
lots of fiber and micro nutrients, so it'll help fill
you up and let your body get stuff done to
keep you going. A pair with some protein and fat,
which is delicious.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Indeed it is. We have a general number for you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
We've got a number adjacent fact. So, China is the
world's top producer, followed by South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines,
and in the United States, California produces the most. Yes, yes,
I had a few other numbers, but I'm pretty sure
(07:03):
that they were referring to nap a cabbage, not bock choi.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, and Lauren and I were discussing this before we
started recording. This was a real pain in this episode
because they're not the same, but people do sometimes equate
them as the same.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, and I mean they're both quite close and they
look vaguely similar. There's one note in here that is
that I'm sticking with it being bock Choi because I
wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Lauren sticking to her guns on this one. Yeah, yeah, yes,
And we will get into that in the history section,
which we will get into as soon as we get
back from a quick break.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
For a word from our.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Sponsors, and we're back, Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, Okay. So, yes,
the history of Bockchoi is really tricky to pin down,
especially given how many names have been and still are
(08:15):
used to refer to it, and confusion with Napa gabbage tricky.
It's just hard hard to pin down. Also, there were
a lot of dishes that I was researching that sounded
really cool that sometimes people put backchoy in, but then
I would come to find out that it's not typical,
so I didn't put that in there. But listeners please
(08:37):
write in if there is a particular dish you associate
with bockchoy. And also, as we've discussed before, when something
is from Asia or some other place, non English speaking
primarily place can be hard to get good resources. So
right in, right in, if there's anything that we may
(09:00):
stollis yeah, always, but all right. Bockchoy likely originated in
China over two thousand years ago. Some of the first
records of cabbage, generally in China go back to five
hundred CE. However, the ancient ancestor of Bokchoi Brasca Rappa
was domesticated somewhere between four thousand to six thousand years ago,
(09:24):
likely in Central Asia. And this is kind of a
new research development. So in a lot of places it
doesn't say this, but newer evidence has updated how old
it is This brasca eventually led to all sorts of
diversification and crops, including bocchoi. Historians believe that farmers in
(09:48):
East Asia and Europe selectively bred early turnips for longer leaves,
eventually leading to bokchoi, and over the years, selective breeding
within bokchoi has led to a lot of varietals. The
fresh vegetables were typically sold at markets, and anything that
was unsold was pickled in brine. Apart from being a
(10:10):
food stuff, it was also used medicinally to treat things
like coughs, colds, or an upset stomach. I couldn't find
hard evidence in English, but since bokchoi was pretty hardy, like,
you could grow it in a lot of places.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It grows pretty easily within a couple months.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, yes, I imagine it ended up in all kinds
of dishes like stir fries and stews. Pretty early on.
Bokchoi first spread throughout nearby Asia. After that, according to
some sources, bok choi made it to Korea by thirteen
hundred CE, and possibly in Kimchi. Bokchoy plantations in Japan
(10:50):
and Malaysia trace back to the nineteenth century, although it
was almost certainly present before then, and records indicate that
bokchoi had made its way to Europe by the mid
eighteenth century, though some sources put it far earlier to
northern Europe during the time of Ancient Rome. Oh wow, Yeah,
there's actually a lot of academic debate about that. Yes,
(11:13):
Swedish naturalist and friend of Carl Linnaeus Pear Osbeck brought
some seeds to Europe in seventeen fifty one, and Jesuit
missionaries transported them to German scientists that were working in Russia.
So it was kind of spreading, okay, all about Yeah,
when it first arrived in Malaysia, it was frequently too
(11:33):
expensive for the poor from what I read well, speaking
of a different category of expensive, Apparently there was something
of a trend of carving jadite like the gemstone, into
the shape of bak choi and other cabbages around China
right around the eighteen hundreds. There is a very famous
(11:56):
example of this from the late eighteen hundreds. It's thought
that's about the size of.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
A real back choi and uses the stone's natural white
to green coloring to depict, you know, the ribs and
the blades of the leaves. It also includes a couple
of small insects. Yeah. The artist is unknown. It's currently
housed in Taiwan's National Palace Museum. It's apparently the most
popular piece in the museum. It's considered a national treasure.
(12:24):
It is sometimes translated as being a Napa cabbage, but
it looks more like back choi to me, because it's
got the smooth leaves, not the curly leaves.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, I'm sticking with them that I.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Love this. It is the most popular ones.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, it is really beautiful and it just looks like
a small like it just looks like a little hand
sized bock choi. I'm like, all.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right, you know, we love food related art.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
A lot's been written about it. How clever the artist
was to create something of a not like a vase
or something that's going to want to be smooth, because
this particular piece of stone had some flaws in it
that lend themselves to the weird surface details of Bakhchoi,
(13:20):
but wouldn't have worked in other features. M anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, I love it. I love it. So. Asian immigrants
introduced the US to Bahchoi beginning in the nineteenth century,
especially with the wave of immigration to California in the
eighteen hundreds during the Gold Rush. However, it remained relatively
(13:47):
unknown outside of Asian communities until the mid to late
twentieth century. There's a really interesting PBS article about this.
In two thousand and five, New South Wales in Australia
introduced new labels for Asian vegetables, meant to clear up
any confusion around them. Apparently they were often mislabeled and
(14:08):
there wasn't consistent spelling on the packaging. So for back choice,
specifically that meant buck choi, so b uk for white,
bok choi, poc choy for green bock choi, and baby
buk choi, and then they have like a whole graph
you can look at it, a little pictures and all
(14:28):
this stuff. But that was it was getting really popular
and there was a lot of confusion around it in Australia,
so they were trying to be like, this is what
this is, let's just clear it up. Yes, I believe
it spread from there to the rest of Australia after that.
(14:49):
In more recent years, in the US and other places
around the world, bock choi has become more available and
well known to consumers outside of communities already familiar with it.
I was reading about how this has increased demand and
how that always comes with some pros and cons and
(15:13):
especially like with climate change and what that looks like.
But it is as people get more familiar with it
around the world and you have increased exposure to it
through things like no PBS Cooking Show, more and more
people are trying it outside of just ordering it at restaurants,
(15:34):
because you can get it a grocery store usually.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, it's relatively inexpensive, it's easy to cook with. Once
you realize how easy it is to cook with, you're like, oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. There were a lot of when it was first
starting to get popular, there were a lot of things,
again outside of where it was already popular, there were
a lot of things that were like, it's so easy
to cook, but don't worry about it. Here's how you
do it. It's gonna be fine.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's not. Oh there's one that I didn't
mention at the top of brissels sprout. Yeah, like, like
a Brussels sprout can be a little bit difficult to
get the texture where you want. Bock choy is. So
it's so it's just like I it's like, oh yeah, sure,
I can do that, no problem there.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah. And one of my favorite recipes for bock choi
has two versions because some people prefer to cook the
leaves separately than the share. Yeah, like kind of the
harder stem part, and some people like both, yeah, just
cooking them at the same time. So they put it
in there in the recipe and it's just like here,
if you prefer this way, this is what the leaves
(16:41):
are gonna taste like, and this is what the stem's
gonna taste like. Or if you prefer this way, I
wish I appreciate. Yeah, I love it when they do that.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely, yes, uh so yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Unfortunately, that's really all I could find concretely for the
history part, but would love to hear from listeners about this.
Oh yeah, dishes references.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Have you grown one? Have you taken the stem end
of one that you purchased and planted it? I understand
you can do that.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Let us know, Let us know. Have you made any art, Oh,
my goodness, block choy art of any kind?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Do you have any cabbage statuary?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
We need to know, yes, desperately, but I think that's
what we have to say about block Choy for now.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It is, and I'm serious about the cabbage statuary. It's
an entire thing. But we do already have some listener
mail for you, and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with listeners. May very nice smiled. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So we have a bit of a longer message from
Rich that we're gonna split. As always, we love getting
these longer messages, so don't stop sending them, Okay. To start,
Rich writes, the time has come to talk of other things,
of shoes and ships and sealing wax and succotash and
(18:34):
krabby kings, good interro. It's been a very long time
since I wrote in, but two of your recent episodes
triggered some core memories of my parents that I hadn't
thought of in a long while that I felt I
need to share. The first was dungeness crab. There's a
story my parents used to tell of long before I
was born. My dad was in the Air Force and
(18:56):
stationed in Reno Nevada. They were living off base in
a small partment where the landlord also lived on the property.
One weekend, they decided to take a drive out to
San Francisco to see the sites, and on the way
out there, landlord asked if they would bring him back
a dungeness crab. Hmmm, a crab, they asked, surely, you
mean a dozen? They and I had grown up on
(19:18):
the coast of North Carolina and were used to the
common blue crabs. The landlord laughed and clarified he truly
meant one, and they see and they'd conclude the story
with how they went out to eat and ordered the
dungeness crab and were shocked at their size when they came.
(19:39):
This would have been around the late nineteen forties early
nineteen fifties, so it wasn't exactly like you'd necessarily see
what local seafood was like on the other side of
the country online or have it available in your local market.
Fast forward to the year two thousand, when I was
out in San Francisco for the first time visiting a
college friend and got a chance to order a dungeon
(20:00):
a crab myself. I had seen them in stores by
that point, but never bought one before and was glad
to get to try it fresh for the first time.
I could really imagine how shocking that must have looked
like if you were used to eating blue crabs by
the dozen. I must say, by comparison their larger West
Coast cousins, feel like you're cheating, as it is so
much easier to pick the meat.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Rich continues that brings us to today. When I was
listening to your episode on Sucatash, it instantly reminded me
of a dish my mom made that we simply called soup.
It was made of lima beans, corn, onions, and crushed tomatoes.
The rest varied by time of year, whim and whatever
was left over or available in large amounts, and could
be pole beans, green beans, field peas, carrots, celery, et cetera,
(20:50):
though happily not bell peppers. The meat would invariably be
left over roast chicken or smoked ham, especially after the holidays,
when there was always some leftover. The twist was she
added rice to it. I'm not sure if that was
because she was trying to make a soup and it
was natural to her that rice went in soup, or
if This was an artifact of growing up in the
shadow of the Great Depression and being used to stretching
(21:12):
things a bit further with cheaper ingredients. And while it
was a bit soupier than succotash, she typically cooked it
until the rice had absorbed most of the water, so
it was in the right general area. Now would always
just called it soup, as I said. But once I
had some friends over and dinner time rolled around and
I pulled out some leftovers for us to have. After serving,
one of them asked if he could get more of
(21:33):
the sucotash. I was confused. Sucotash, in my experience, was
that terrible thing they had as a side in school
lunches that you had to pick if they were out
of tater tots or fried okra. It was bland lima
bean's corn and those tragically square little carrot bits with
absolutely zero seasoning. Now, after listening to the episode, I
can see the connection and feel like this is, if
(21:55):
not a true variant of succotash, at least a parallel
evolution of it. I also have a massive craving for
it that I'll have to satisfy soon with the batch.
Don't ask for a recipe, though this is one of
those dishes you assemble, however, your heart leads you for
context if you're doing the math on the spread of
years above. I'm only fifty four. My parents were born
(22:15):
in nineteen thirty and thirty two, and I was their
only child, born in nineteen seventy one when my mom
was forty one, which had me straddling a lot of
odd generational gaps, both culturally and culinarily. As such, I
still lament the demise of the Unita biscuit, which is
forever the only acceptable base for proper homemade stuffing at
Thanksgiving or Christmas. Thanks for the great show and first
(22:39):
stirring up a couple of fond memories this holiday season.
Mom and Dad are both gone, but they felt a
little closer these past few weeks.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Oh oh well, thank you, Yes, yeah, always God when
we can bring back these memories.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Absolutely. Oh that does sound exactly like sucotash, though, like
I mean, the rice is a different edition.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
But yeah, yeah, and I'm kind of surprised that they
serve the sad Psychotash at your school. I'm very intrigued
by different because we've heard from listeners over the years
of what their school lunches involved, and some of them,
I'm so taken aback because it was very different from
(23:22):
what yours was. Yes, and I don't think I ever
encountered anything like that.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I didn't eat. I didn't eat school lunch very often.
But I feel like I feel like that was a thing.
I don't know. I'm aware of the fact that it
is a cafeteria offering. Yes, yes, yeah, we do have
to do an episode on school lunches.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
We do. It's going to be yeah, yeah, we do.
So listeners go ahead and start writing in about that.
Yeah items, because what was it? It was chilly and
cinnamon rolls. Somebody wrote in about was one of their things?
Oh yeah, yeah, So go ahead and start sending those in.
I love this about the dungeness crawb Yes, I as
(24:10):
someone who also has had to purchase a crab and
been unclear on the differences, Like I mean, even I
have familiarity, but I wasn't certain, and I had to
ask the lady at the counter. It's like, we're cooking
for six people, We're making this.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Many how many crabs? Helped me out because I had
no idea. Yeah, yeah, no, she did me a solid
most most protein counter. Humans can can be very helpful
about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yes, I do love that. The landlord laughed.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I was like, no, no, no, y'all are in for a
fun surprise.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Go check it out. Yeah, I just need the one,
do not need a dozen? And they are indeed easier
to get the meat off of.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yes, the big ones are so much easier. It does
feel like cheating.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It does. It feels so easy to kind of feel like, oh,
what is this? I thought it was supposed to be difficult.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I haven't injured myself well hardly more than ten times.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I know what's going on here. So thank you, thank you,
thank you so much Fridge for sharing these memories. Yeah,
and listeners, if you would like to write to us,
we would love to hear from you. You can email
us at hello at saberpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at saber pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks, as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(25:52):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm any Reason and I'm Lauren vogel Baum, and today
we have an episode for you about bok Choi.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, any particular reason this was on your mind, born.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I was thinking about vegetation, okay, fruits, fruits and vegetables.
I was looking for something that is nice and seasonal
for the winter and realized that we have not done
back choi yet.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Nope, we have not, but we have done a lot
of past episodes related to bok choy.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, many cousins, radishes, bsabi, horse, radish, mustard, arugalala. Those
are just the ones that I thought of off the
top of my head. I'm sure there's others.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yes, yes, there are. I do love bock choy too.
I usually use it in soups, and I have to
admit it was kind of a newer acquisition in my
cooking of it. I'd had it at restaurants previously, but
me cooking it, but it's so nice, Yeah, yeah, it's
(01:19):
it's really it's such a delightful vegetable.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
My very favorite Chinese place in town High or urban
High does a stir fry that's just bock choi with
tofu skin just in this really like light ginger garlic,
sesame sauce or like almost like a broth kind of
and it's just so nice and light and tender, and
(01:45):
oh it's so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'll have to check that out because I love tofu
skin as well.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yes, it's just it's just a whole dish full of
these like wonderful, delicate, kind of silky textures. And I'm like, yes,
thank you. How did you know.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Exactly what I needed? Okay, Well, good recommendation. Well, I
guess that brings us to our question, sure, bockchoi?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
What is it? Well? Back Choi is a type of
leafy green vegetable that grows in clusters or heads of
leaves that are each relatively smooth and flat, each with
a big, broad, juicy rib that'll be white to pale
green in color, and then a short, wide, rounded blade
of darker green coming up off of that. Like, the
(02:40):
leaves are at least equal parts rib and blade. Yeah,
each leaf is sort of spade shaped. The whole head
can be smaller than a hand or as large as two,
but will generally be mild and vegetable and a little bitter.
Sweet in flavor with maybe just a tiny hint of pepperinus.
(03:01):
It's tender and mild enough to be eaten like raw
and a salad. But those big ribs will also retain
a little bit of crunch when cooked, maybe chopped into
a stir fry or simmered into a super stew. Maybe
it's part of a hot pot. The blade part of
the leaves will wilt when heated, but they don't fall
apart and have like a really nice, silky sort of
(03:23):
chew to them. You can also pickle them to preserve them,
or chop them fine for texture and or color, like
as a filling in dumplings or something like that. It's
just a really mild, pretty leafy green. It's like a
it's like a very polite cabbage. Buck Choi makes eating
(03:45):
your greens feel like a treat.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting. It's nice.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
It is so good, okay anyway, oh yeah. Buck Choi
is one of the many cultivars of the species Brassica rappa,
part of the larger mustard family. Different varieties of the
species have been developed for different purposes, including turnips for
their roots, seedy strains for canola oil, and leafy varieties
for things like a big curly leaved Napa cabbage and
(04:15):
smaller smooth leaved bock choi. All of these things that
I just said all count as the same species because
they can all cross fertilize with each other. Bokchoi itself
goes by a lot of different names and spellings of
those names bocchoi, hoc choi choi, some Chinese white cabbage,
(04:37):
or celery cabbage, mustard cabbage, field mustard, spoon cabbage, And
those are just the ones that have taken off English.
There's a bunch more out there, and there's a bunch
of confusion about them.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yay, yep, indeed there is, but we're.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Trying our best, okay. So, Bocchoi grows in subtropical to
temperate environments. It basically prefers like human comfortable temperatures, but
can survive heat and frosts if the weather is nice enough.
It can have like two to three growing seasons a year.
The plant grows roots down to the soil and a
thick stem up into the air, off of which broad
(05:16):
leaves grow in a loose head, each leaf overlapping sort
of like petals on a flower. New leaves come up
from the center of the head, and you can harvest
individual leaves off of the outside of the head, or
just cut the whole head off at the stem. You
typically want to do that after about two months of growth,
when the plant is mature, but before it's sent up
(05:36):
a flower stalk. The flowers are edible too, and can
be used in salads or as a garnish. They're these
tiny little yellow buddies. If pollinated, they will each develop
a small, hard, brown colored fruit that will split open
when the many tiny seeds inside have developed. And yeah,
you can harvest the leaves or the whole head when
(05:58):
they're younger or old. They'll go from sweeter and more
delicate to a little bit more bitter and tougher. But
generally bock choy is pretty like fleshy and crunchy and pleasant.
Bock Choys leaves are like really loosely packed compared to
a lot of its other cabbagee cousins. Well, what about
(06:21):
the nutrition by itself? Back choi is really good for you,
lots of fiber and micro nutrients, so it'll help fill
you up and let your body get stuff done to
keep you going. A pair with some protein and fat,
which is delicious.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Indeed it is. We have a general number for you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
We've got a number adjacent fact. So, China is the
world's top producer, followed by South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines,
and in the United States, California produces the most. Yes, yes,
I had a few other numbers, but I'm pretty sure
(07:03):
that they were referring to nap a cabbage, not bock choi.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, and Lauren and I were discussing this before we
started recording. This was a real pain in this episode
because they're not the same, but people do sometimes equate
them as the same.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, and I mean they're both quite close and they
look vaguely similar. There's one note in here that is
that I'm sticking with it being bock Choi because I
wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Lauren sticking to her guns on this one. Yeah, yeah, yes,
And we will get into that in the history section,
which we will get into as soon as we get
back from a quick break.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
For a word from our.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Sponsors, and we're back, Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, Okay. So, yes,
the history of Bockchoi is really tricky to pin down,
especially given how many names have been and still are
(08:15):
used to refer to it, and confusion with Napa gabbage tricky.
It's just hard hard to pin down. Also, there were
a lot of dishes that I was researching that sounded
really cool that sometimes people put backchoy in, but then
I would come to find out that it's not typical,
so I didn't put that in there. But listeners please
(08:37):
write in if there is a particular dish you associate
with bockchoy. And also, as we've discussed before, when something
is from Asia or some other place, non English speaking
primarily place can be hard to get good resources. So
right in, right in, if there's anything that we may
(09:00):
stollis yeah, always, but all right. Bockchoy likely originated in
China over two thousand years ago. Some of the first
records of cabbage, generally in China go back to five
hundred CE. However, the ancient ancestor of Bokchoi Brasca Rappa
was domesticated somewhere between four thousand to six thousand years ago,
(09:24):
likely in Central Asia. And this is kind of a
new research development. So in a lot of places it
doesn't say this, but newer evidence has updated how old
it is This brasca eventually led to all sorts of
diversification and crops, including bocchoi. Historians believe that farmers in
(09:48):
East Asia and Europe selectively bred early turnips for longer leaves,
eventually leading to bokchoi, and over the years, selective breeding
within bokchoi has led to a lot of varietals. The
fresh vegetables were typically sold at markets, and anything that
was unsold was pickled in brine. Apart from being a
(10:10):
food stuff, it was also used medicinally to treat things
like coughs, colds, or an upset stomach. I couldn't find
hard evidence in English, but since bokchoi was pretty hardy, like,
you could grow it in a lot of places.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It grows pretty easily within a couple months.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, yes, I imagine it ended up in all kinds
of dishes like stir fries and stews. Pretty early on.
Bokchoi first spread throughout nearby Asia. After that, according to
some sources, bok choi made it to Korea by thirteen
hundred CE, and possibly in Kimchi. Bokchoy plantations in Japan
(10:50):
and Malaysia trace back to the nineteenth century, although it
was almost certainly present before then, and records indicate that
bokchoi had made its way to Europe by the mid
eighteenth century, though some sources put it far earlier to
northern Europe during the time of Ancient Rome. Oh wow, Yeah,
there's actually a lot of academic debate about that. Yes,
(11:13):
Swedish naturalist and friend of Carl Linnaeus Pear Osbeck brought
some seeds to Europe in seventeen fifty one, and Jesuit
missionaries transported them to German scientists that were working in Russia.
So it was kind of spreading, okay, all about Yeah,
when it first arrived in Malaysia, it was frequently too
(11:33):
expensive for the poor from what I read well, speaking
of a different category of expensive, Apparently there was something
of a trend of carving jadite like the gemstone, into
the shape of bak choi and other cabbages around China
right around the eighteen hundreds. There is a very famous
(11:56):
example of this from the late eighteen hundreds. It's thought
that's about the size of.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
A real back choi and uses the stone's natural white
to green coloring to depict, you know, the ribs and
the blades of the leaves. It also includes a couple
of small insects. Yeah. The artist is unknown. It's currently
housed in Taiwan's National Palace Museum. It's apparently the most
popular piece in the museum. It's considered a national treasure.
(12:24):
It is sometimes translated as being a Napa cabbage, but
it looks more like back choi to me, because it's
got the smooth leaves, not the curly leaves.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, I'm sticking with them that I.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Love this. It is the most popular ones.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, it is really beautiful and it just looks like
a small like it just looks like a little hand
sized bock choi. I'm like, all.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right, you know, we love food related art.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
A lot's been written about it. How clever the artist
was to create something of a not like a vase
or something that's going to want to be smooth, because
this particular piece of stone had some flaws in it
that lend themselves to the weird surface details of Bakhchoi,
(13:20):
but wouldn't have worked in other features. M anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yes, I love it. I love it. So. Asian immigrants
introduced the US to Bahchoi beginning in the nineteenth century,
especially with the wave of immigration to California in the
eighteen hundreds during the Gold Rush. However, it remained relatively
(13:47):
unknown outside of Asian communities until the mid to late
twentieth century. There's a really interesting PBS article about this.
In two thousand and five, New South Wales in Australia
introduced new labels for Asian vegetables, meant to clear up
any confusion around them. Apparently they were often mislabeled and
(14:08):
there wasn't consistent spelling on the packaging. So for back choice,
specifically that meant buck choi, so b uk for white,
bok choi, poc choy for green bock choi, and baby
buk choi, and then they have like a whole graph
you can look at it, a little pictures and all
(14:28):
this stuff. But that was it was getting really popular
and there was a lot of confusion around it in Australia,
so they were trying to be like, this is what
this is, let's just clear it up. Yes, I believe
it spread from there to the rest of Australia after that.
(14:49):
In more recent years, in the US and other places
around the world, bock choi has become more available and
well known to consumers outside of communities already familiar with it.
I was reading about how this has increased demand and
how that always comes with some pros and cons and
(15:13):
especially like with climate change and what that looks like.
But it is as people get more familiar with it
around the world and you have increased exposure to it
through things like no PBS Cooking Show, more and more
people are trying it outside of just ordering it at restaurants,
(15:34):
because you can get it a grocery store usually.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, it's relatively inexpensive, it's easy to cook with. Once
you realize how easy it is to cook with, you're like, oh, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. There were a lot of when it was first
starting to get popular, there were a lot of things,
again outside of where it was already popular, there were
a lot of things that were like, it's so easy
to cook, but don't worry about it. Here's how you
do it. It's gonna be fine.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's not. Oh there's one that I didn't
mention at the top of brissels sprout. Yeah, like, like
a Brussels sprout can be a little bit difficult to
get the texture where you want. Bock choy is. So
it's so it's just like I it's like, oh yeah, sure,
I can do that, no problem there.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah. And one of my favorite recipes for bock choi
has two versions because some people prefer to cook the
leaves separately than the share. Yeah, like kind of the
harder stem part, and some people like both, yeah, just
cooking them at the same time. So they put it
in there in the recipe and it's just like here,
if you prefer this way, this is what the leaves
(16:41):
are gonna taste like, and this is what the stem's
gonna taste like. Or if you prefer this way, I
wish I appreciate. Yeah, I love it when they do that.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely, yes, uh so yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Unfortunately, that's really all I could find concretely for the
history part, but would love to hear from listeners about this.
Oh yeah, dishes references.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Have you grown one? Have you taken the stem end
of one that you purchased and planted it? I understand
you can do that.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Let us know, Let us know. Have you made any art, Oh,
my goodness, block choy art of any kind?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Do you have any cabbage statuary?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
We need to know, yes, desperately, but I think that's
what we have to say about block Choy for now.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It is, and I'm serious about the cabbage statuary. It's
an entire thing. But we do already have some listener
mail for you, and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with listeners. May very nice smiled. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So we have a bit of a longer message from
Rich that we're gonna split. As always, we love getting
these longer messages, so don't stop sending them, Okay. To start,
Rich writes, the time has come to talk of other things,
of shoes and ships and sealing wax and succotash and
(18:34):
krabby kings, good interro. It's been a very long time
since I wrote in, but two of your recent episodes
triggered some core memories of my parents that I hadn't
thought of in a long while that I felt I
need to share. The first was dungeness crab. There's a
story my parents used to tell of long before I
was born. My dad was in the Air Force and
(18:56):
stationed in Reno Nevada. They were living off base in
a small partment where the landlord also lived on the property.
One weekend, they decided to take a drive out to
San Francisco to see the sites, and on the way
out there, landlord asked if they would bring him back
a dungeness crab. Hmmm, a crab, they asked, surely, you
mean a dozen? They and I had grown up on
(19:18):
the coast of North Carolina and were used to the
common blue crabs. The landlord laughed and clarified he truly
meant one, and they see and they'd conclude the story
with how they went out to eat and ordered the
dungeness crab and were shocked at their size when they came.
(19:39):
This would have been around the late nineteen forties early
nineteen fifties, so it wasn't exactly like you'd necessarily see
what local seafood was like on the other side of
the country online or have it available in your local market.
Fast forward to the year two thousand, when I was
out in San Francisco for the first time visiting a
college friend and got a chance to order a dungeon
(20:00):
a crab myself. I had seen them in stores by
that point, but never bought one before and was glad
to get to try it fresh for the first time.
I could really imagine how shocking that must have looked
like if you were used to eating blue crabs by
the dozen. I must say, by comparison their larger West
Coast cousins, feel like you're cheating, as it is so
much easier to pick the meat.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Rich continues that brings us to today. When I was
listening to your episode on Sucatash, it instantly reminded me
of a dish my mom made that we simply called soup.
It was made of lima beans, corn, onions, and crushed tomatoes.
The rest varied by time of year, whim and whatever
was left over or available in large amounts, and could
be pole beans, green beans, field peas, carrots, celery, et cetera,
(20:50):
though happily not bell peppers. The meat would invariably be
left over roast chicken or smoked ham, especially after the holidays,
when there was always some leftover. The twist was she
added rice to it. I'm not sure if that was
because she was trying to make a soup and it
was natural to her that rice went in soup, or
if This was an artifact of growing up in the
shadow of the Great Depression and being used to stretching
(21:12):
things a bit further with cheaper ingredients. And while it
was a bit soupier than succotash, she typically cooked it
until the rice had absorbed most of the water, so
it was in the right general area. Now would always
just called it soup, as I said. But once I
had some friends over and dinner time rolled around and
I pulled out some leftovers for us to have. After serving,
one of them asked if he could get more of
(21:33):
the sucotash. I was confused. Sucotash, in my experience, was
that terrible thing they had as a side in school
lunches that you had to pick if they were out
of tater tots or fried okra. It was bland lima
bean's corn and those tragically square little carrot bits with
absolutely zero seasoning. Now, after listening to the episode, I
can see the connection and feel like this is, if
(21:55):
not a true variant of succotash, at least a parallel
evolution of it. I also have a massive craving for
it that I'll have to satisfy soon with the batch.
Don't ask for a recipe, though this is one of
those dishes you assemble, however, your heart leads you for
context if you're doing the math on the spread of
years above. I'm only fifty four. My parents were born
(22:15):
in nineteen thirty and thirty two, and I was their
only child, born in nineteen seventy one when my mom
was forty one, which had me straddling a lot of
odd generational gaps, both culturally and culinarily. As such, I
still lament the demise of the Unita biscuit, which is
forever the only acceptable base for proper homemade stuffing at
Thanksgiving or Christmas. Thanks for the great show and first
(22:39):
stirring up a couple of fond memories this holiday season.
Mom and Dad are both gone, but they felt a
little closer these past few weeks.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Oh oh well, thank you, Yes, yeah, always God when
we can bring back these memories.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Absolutely. Oh that does sound exactly like sucotash, though, like
I mean, the rice is a different edition.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
But yeah, yeah, and I'm kind of surprised that they
serve the sad Psychotash at your school. I'm very intrigued
by different because we've heard from listeners over the years
of what their school lunches involved, and some of them,
I'm so taken aback because it was very different from
(23:22):
what yours was. Yes, and I don't think I ever
encountered anything like that.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I didn't eat. I didn't eat school lunch very often.
But I feel like I feel like that was a thing.
I don't know. I'm aware of the fact that it
is a cafeteria offering. Yes, yes, yeah, we do have
to do an episode on school lunches.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
We do. It's going to be yeah, yeah, we do.
So listeners go ahead and start writing in about that.
Yeah items, because what was it? It was chilly and
cinnamon rolls. Somebody wrote in about was one of their things?
Oh yeah, yeah, So go ahead and start sending those in.
I love this about the dungeness crawb Yes, I as
(24:10):
someone who also has had to purchase a crab and
been unclear on the differences, Like I mean, even I
have familiarity, but I wasn't certain, and I had to
ask the lady at the counter. It's like, we're cooking
for six people, We're making this.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Many how many crabs? Helped me out because I had
no idea. Yeah, yeah, no, she did me a solid
most most protein counter. Humans can can be very helpful
about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yes, I do love that. The landlord laughed.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I was like, no, no, no, y'all are in for a
fun surprise.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Go check it out. Yeah, I just need the one,
do not need a dozen? And they are indeed easier
to get the meat off of.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yes, the big ones are so much easier. It does
feel like cheating.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It does. It feels so easy to kind of feel like, oh,
what is this? I thought it was supposed to be difficult.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I haven't injured myself well hardly more than ten times.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I know what's going on here. So thank you, thank you,
thank you so much Fridge for sharing these memories. Yeah,
and listeners, if you would like to write to us,
we would love to hear from you. You can email
us at hello at saberpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at saber pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks, as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(25:52):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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