Have You Heard Of Poke Salad? This Unexpected Southern Dish Starts With A Weed

Medically reviewed by Carolyn O'Neil, MS, RDN

Southerners have always been gifted at making the best out of anything. (Take old-fashioned potato candy, for instance, which uses leftover mashed potatoes to make a sweet, nutty treat.)

Poke salad, or sometimes "poke sallet" is the name for a special preparation for a toxic weed that you can only find throughout the south. While it's not necessarily a common food on restaurant menus, it is a dish borne of Appalachian culinary resilience and tradition.

What Is Poke Salad?

The dish is so-named because it is made with pokeweed, the pervasive flowering plant native to North America. With a sturdy red stem, this plant can grow as tall as 6 feet, growing beautiful dark red berries and white flowers. While the flowers and berries are extremely toxic, it's actually the dark, leafy green leaves that are used to make poke salad. These bitter leaves must be ingested properly, usually by boiling at least twice—then cooking over high heat in a tasty oil like bacon fat—to eliminate the toxicity and avoid complications.

The recipe is also known as poke sallet (a French-derived word similar to salade) and polk salad (inspired by the country song “Polk Salad Annie”). Since pokeweed is especially prevalent in Southern Appalachia along open fields, roadsides, and the edges of forested areas, the make-do recipe became a type of foraged staple in many rural Southern communities.

Is Poke Salad The Same As Killed Lettuce?

For those familiar with the popular Appalachian dish “killed lettuce” or "kilt lettuce," poke salad is similar in theory. While killed lettuce merely refers to tossing greens in a piping-hot dressing to warm and wilt the lettuce, poke salad requires actual cooking to turn the leaves into an edible side dish. Another similarity between the two regional recipes is the common use of bacon grease to dress the greens with major flavor. Bonus points if the bacon grease was grabbed from an old Crisco can on the kitchen counter. Killed lettuce uses hot bacon grease along with other ingredients to create a dressing, while poke salad is typically sautéed in the bacon grease after being twice-boiled.

How To Make Poke Salad

Pokeweed can be foraged in many different places, but it's commonly found along roadsides, surrounding fences, and basically anywhere where weeds tend to pop up. While the grown plant features maroon stems and berries (seen above), it’s advised to use the green leaves of a younger pokeweed during the spring when making poke salad.

Poke salad must be boiled twice in separate pots to remove the toxicity; wilted leaves are drained and then commonly cooked once more—typically in bacon grease—in a skillet. The final dish tastes akin to sautéed spinach or mustard greens with a subtle touch of bitter earthiness.

Tip

If you don't have bacon grease on hand or don't eat pork, you can use olive oil, grapeseed oil, or vegetable oil instead.

What To Eat With Poke Salad

Poke salad greens are typically dressed up much like any dark, bitter or leafy greens might be. In addition to salt, pepper, and crumbled bacon, classic Southern Appalachian preserved preparations like pickles or chowchow are a common topping. In some households, it was common to combine the sautéed greens with eggs to make a hearty scramble. 

Turning an unused weed into food on the table, poke salad is just one of many ways that Southern home cooks once created sustenance out of cleverness, finding ingenuity in perhaps unlikely places. Much like the Depression pies that turned unexpected pantry staples into pies like Vinegar Pie and Soda Cracker Pie.

Frequently asked Questions

Can you eat pokeweed berries?

Pokeweed's toxicity increases as it matures, so berries, roots, stalks, seeds, and raw leaves should not be consumed. Boiling the leaves in water (two times) is essential before consumption, but you should still avoid using leaves from mature plants.

Can you touch pokeweed with your hands?

When handling pokeweed, use protective gloves to prevent chemicals from passing through your skin, affecting your blood. Pokeweed toxicity increases as the plant matures, but you should always be careful when handling this plant.

Read the original article on Southern Living