Appalachian Appetite: Poke Sallet

Poke sallet has long been a staple in the Appalachian South. Also known as pokeweed, pokebush, pokeroot, it goes by the Latin name Phytolacca americana. As Southern Foodways Alliance member Joe York rightly says, its main advantage is that “It’s free and you don’t even have to plant it or weed it. Some people can’t live without it once they’ve tasted it.”

In 1968 Tony Joe White wrote and recorded “Polk Salad Annie” (notice the misspelling of both “poke” and “sallet”), which was Number 8 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1969, and was later covered by Elvis, featuring some spectacular moves and classic Elvis expressions designed to make you want to go out and gather a mess this instant.

Make sure, when you go out with your pail, that you pick only the young leaves, and avoid any berries. Once the stem begins to turn purple, later in the summer, avoid the plant altogether. As with nettles, wear gloves as a precaution when picking and sorting, to keep the toxins from entering your body through your skin.

Despite its reputation as a potentially dangerous plant, poke sallet has long been consumed not only as a spring tonic, noted for cleaning the system of winter sluggishness, but as a marked delicacy.

So that you can sing along with Tony Joe White, or with Elvis as you boil and fry, here is a verse to that intriguingly tantalizing ditty:

"Every day for supper time, she'd go down by the truck patch
And pick her a mess of polk salad, and carry it home in a tow sack

Polk salad Annie, the ’gators got your granny
Everybody says it was a shame

’Cause her momma was a-workin' on the chain gang"

Ingredients:

Pailful of young poke leaves

Lots of salted water

A couple of tablespoons of bacon fat

Preparation:

Wash and parboil the poke leaves, removing any stems and berries that may have fallen into the bucket. Pour off the water and parboil a second and (optionally) third time to be certain that any toxins have been removed. (If you have gathered young leaves without a trace of purple, you are probably safe from any serious toxicity.)

Strain and sauté in bacon fat, and serve alongside chicken or pork, and fried or mashed potatoes. Top, if you are lucky enough to have them, with sautéed ramps, or with bits of bacon or cracklin’s.

Susi Gott Séguret, a native of Madison County, orchestrates a variety of culinary adventures, including a series of foraging-cooking-dining events called the Appalachian Culinary Experience.  A fiddler, photographer and ballad singer as well as chef, she is the author of Appalachian Appetite, Recipes from the Heart of America. www.schoolofculinaryarts.org