By the time the hottest days of summer come around, the wild greens of spring have grown too tough to enjoy. When this time comes, I head to my mother’s garden to help her weed – not just to visit or enjoy her excellent cooking, but also because her garden is the best place I know to gather lots and lots of my favorite summertime wild salad ingredient, purslane (Portulaca oleracea).
This prostrate, creeping garden weed doesn’t look like much. Its red to reddish green stems sprawl flat across the ground in a fan-like rosette. Little, paddle-shaped, inch-long leaves alternate haphazardly along the branches, giving it a scraggly appearance, except at the tips where the leaves are bunched in a whorl. The yellow flowers are tiny, usually have five petals, and only open for a few hours on hot summer mornings. These eventually mature into a cup-like capsule of miniscule seeds that look like olives in a tiny bowl.
I harvest purslane by pulling up the entire plants and laying them together, root-side down to keep the dirt out of the stems and leaves. The entire plant is edible, and once I’ve gathered a sizable bundle, I cut off the roots and bottom-most stems with a pair of kitchen shears, careful to keep as much dirt out of the stems and greens as I can. Washing this plant (which basically grows by lying in the dirt) is the hardest part of its preparation.
Purslane is wonderfully mild, neither sour nor bitter, and as a drought-adapted succulent, its leaves and stems are thickened to retain water. This succulence is the key to its unique texture: crisp, slippery, and juicy. I like to snack on the raw stems while I harvest. It is my absolute favorite thing to add to salads. It stir-fries and sautés well, wilting just a little, and can be added to all kinds of sauces, stews, and casseroles.
I’ve read that a flour can be ground from its seeds, although how this can be gathered in any quantity, I can’t imagine. I just throw the flowers and seed capsules in with all the stems and leaves. If you’re looking for good recipes, check out Mediterranean cuisine. Greek, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish kitchens regularly use purslane under a variety of regional names.
Surprisingly, I think the highest use of purslane is as a pickle. You can make your own brine or just pack a jar of leftover brine from store-bought pickles. The succulent stems stay crisp and make great snacks or sandwich condiments.
Wild food writer John Kallas notes that purslane has more omega-3 fatty acids than any leafy green ever tested. Same with vitamin E. Pound for pound, it has as much iron as spinach. There’s no doubt that purslane is good for you. But I don’t think about that much when I sit down to a summer picnic with my mother after a morning in the garden. I just sprinkle purslane on my sandwich like others might sprinkle alfalfa sprouts and dig in; good food and good company need no justification.