Growing Food: The Enigma of Kohlrabi

I can't remember the first time I ever ate kohlrabi. It's certainly not a vegetable I had ever encountered in my childhood. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had never even heard of it until sometime in the last decade. Most probably I was introduced to it by the MiL.

Kohlrabi is not a well-known vegetable. I would venture a guess that few of you have ever had it. It's even sort of perplexing to figure out what part of the plant to eat.

So let's talk about it!

Kohlrabi is a member of the brassica family, which means it's related to broccoli. And in fact, it tastes exactly like a broccoli stem. I happen to love the stem of broccoli more than the florets--it's a texture thing--which is one reason I love kohlrabi. Also, those nasty cabbage worms can't hide in kohlrabi the way they do in broccoli florets. Man, I hate those things. So gross.

Anyway.

Like all brassicas, kohlrabi is fairly cold hardy. I start the seeds for it indoors at the same time as my cabbage seeds, and I plant them all out at the same time, too. 

Cabbages and kohlrabi, all walled off.

As small plants, they're almost impossible to tell apart. But identification gets easier as they get a bit bigger, because the kohlrabi plant will grow to a much larger diameter than a cabbage plant.

The kohlrabi plant is mostly large leaves. These look just like collard greens, and can be cooked just the same way. I understand they can even be picked a few at a time without harm to the plant if an earlier harvest of greens is desired, although I don't care enough for cooked greens to do this.

The part of the kohlrabi plant that makes it unique, however, is the stem. At the base, just above ground, the stem will swell into a ball about the size of a baseball. That's the part this plant is really grown for, and that's the part that's best to eat.

Kohlrabi plants don't grow any secondary harvest after this is cut, so I just yank the whole plant out by the roots when it's time to harvest it. There's no way to tell when it's ready except by the size of the bulbous base. Any larger than three inches or so in diameter and it will start to get too woody to eat.

To harvest, I pull the whole plant out by the roots. I usually have to use a shovel to pry it up, because the roots are quite anchored.

I broke off quite a few stems getting this one out, but it doesn't matter, because . . .

Next I snap off the leaves where they attach to the ball part. As I mentioned, the leaves can be cooked or frozen just like collard greens. I sometimes do this for some of the plants, although I'm just not that into cooked greens enough to cook or freeze them all, so the chickens get some too.

Removing the root ball is actually quite difficult. Knives aren't really up to the task, so I use our Japanese saw.

Like so.

You can see in the above photo that the proportion of leaves to the ball part is quite unequal. That ball is going to be reduced further in size by the next phase, which I neglected to take a photo of.

The ball part needs to be peeled. I use a paring knife and peel away the tough outer skin all around, kind of like an apple.

After all this, I'm left with maybe a cup of vegetable. This is why I say that kohlrabi doesn't make a lot of sense to grow from the perspective of yield. It's probably one reason I've never seen it at a grocery store or farmer's market, too.

However, I don't need to make a profit on my vegetables, so I can grow what I want. And I want to grow kohlrabi. I love it, and so do all my children. Although it can be cooked and used in any way broccoli can--it's most often mentioned in the context of stir-fry, but I've even seen a recipe for stuffing the whole ball--we always eat it raw. I just cut it into sticks and it's gone in minutes.

So tell me, my fellow gardeners: What do you grow despite its impracticality?

* For anyone who may have noticed, yes, I slightly changed the title of this series. "Gardening for Food" was just too clunky. Of course, now I have to go back and change all of the other post titles, because this is number 20 in the series. Kind of hard to believe.