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Arugula is spicy but I think part of why it's particularly unpalatable to Adam here is it's gone through the hormonal changes to form a flower stalk, called "bolting" in common garden parlance. When leafy greens like spinach, lettuce, and brassicas grown for leaves go to flower, they tend to produce additional bitter flavor compounds to protect them from bugs and herbivores during their final reproductive stage of life. The particular spicy compounds in arugula are still present in it's leafy stage, but they are less concentrated and balanced by the sweeter flavors of most tender leafy greens.
This. Leaves also generally tend to shrink during this stage becoming drier and more fibrous. I remember when I worked on a farm in July and we had to pick all the flowers from the basil to keep it worth selling.
@@charlietudju8238 my basil always starts doing this (more compact, firm and bitter leaves) after a couple months, even though I'm regularly cutting it back to prevent it from flowering. IDK what it is I'm doing wrong.
@@tiarkrezar If its bolting faster than you can cut it then you should just let them go to seed tbh. You'll at least be able to get a couple years worth of seeds from it. Then you can use it for next years crop or for a fall crop.
Farmer here: in your area (7b I’d guess) arugula is only an early spring crop. Your arugula is very bolted, you should never harvest greens when bolted, even iceberg lettuce is inedibly bitter when bolted. However, arugula is especially fickle, even just growing it when the days are consistently hitting above 80 for a few days will make it wildly bitter even before it bolts. I only grow it in the winter in my high tunnel.
Can confirm, 35 years gardener... I let a lettuce go this year though and it grew into the most ornamental red Christmas tree shaped beauty, so sometimes things still surprise me.
@@darcieclements4880 Bolted lettuce is really beautiful! If I was an ornamental gardener I'd let all my lettuce bolt. Unfortunately, I've got to clear bed space for the next crop.
Adam,you have to harvest before it bolts like that. It’s a short window in summer, but if you catch it when the leaves are still small and close to the ground it’s much milder.
I continue to eat mine after it bolts and its not AS good as the young stuff but ive never had a reaction like Adam's and id never describe it as tasting like a fart. I would eat arugula absolutely every day if i had it
My parents grow a lot of arugula and I absolutely devour it all when I'm visiting. With some lemony dressing it goes amazingly well with chicken-rice type dishes.
4:45 Small pedantic correction here: While the two parts of glucosinolate are indeed derived from glucose and an amino acid, they are no longer called that. I would normally excuse this but the part on the right is chemically extremely different from an amino acid, so I had to call it out. The part on the left is called a thioglucose (aka glucose with sulfur attached). The other part is called a sulfated aldoxime, sulfated because of the SO3 that's attached instead of hydrogen. Two reasons why an aldoxine is so chemically different from an amino acid is that an amino acid never has a double bond on the nitrogen and the nitrogen is never directly connected to the oxygen, there's always a carbon atom in between. Stuff like that is a big deal in chemistry!
In Greek it is called “roka”. It was considered mostly a weed or at least goat feed for decades. Only use I remember as a child was an assorted wild greens casserole (very specific locally to my island of Kefalonia). When it became a trendy item in the 90’s my mom used to make fun of tourists in the restaurant asking for the SO hip “rocket/Parmesan” salad. She regarded it goat feed and thought we were robbing people selling them weeds. I personally like its peppery bite mixed in salads but not much on its own.
I didn't know roka and aragula are the same thing. I'm lebanese and moved to the US to discover aragula. In lebanon, we have roka. I'm not much into any of them, so I never made the connection. Also, if I remember right, roka is much spicier, which makes sense as americans have bred the flavor out of everything.
Interesting! I lived in rural East Africa for a time and my local friends taught me to forage for a very delicious green to add to our meals. Turns out it was amaranth, which most people consider a weed. I found some growing wild in my yard in East Texas!
Arugula is great in cold sandwiches, perfect second breakfast for summer time. Bread, as little mayo as the bread needs, arugula, some lean cold cut meat, pink pickled onions (mine have pickled hot peppers in there too), cold cut meat, arugula, littlest mayo, bread. The cold cuts can be different meats for variety and the second layer of arugula can be some lettuce instead. The bread and the cold cuts give it a satisfying chewiness and body, the arugula and pickles give it a crunchy contrast in texture and a spicy + acidic bite, and the mayo brings the creaminess that rounds it all out.
I make one with pesto and about half as much greek yoghurt with salt and pepper and lemon juice to taste as a sauce, add some chicken, as much arugula as you can stomach for bitterness, some variety of small tomato for a little acidity, juiciness and a heterogene texture, and mozzarella for creaminess and fat. All in all, fairly balanced flavorwise if a little bland with the upside that you can pretend it's "healthy."
@@personmcpeopleface266 I wonder if it's "bland" because it's missing some bites of intense and different flavor. Slivers of parmesan tossed with the arugula so that they don't slip out, red pepper flakes stuck on the mozz, or maybe even a leaf or two of mint could be all it needs. Or you could try taking the minimalist approach. Deconstruct the concept of this sandwich, reduce it to the bare minimum of what it is to you and reconstruct. With less stuff going on the remaining things should pop more and that might fix the perceived blandness.
The plant is called Senapskål in Swedish. Literal translation would be mustard-cabbage. But the leaves are generally called and sold as Rucola or Ruccola.
And was shunned and despised for so many years, but slap a new name on it, put an italian chef or something on TV using it, and suddenly you have great demand. Branding is important, it's why I maintain the opinion that Kålpudding (lit. Cabbage-Pudding) has a "branding" problem, it's meatloaf with cabbage served with gravy, it's great.
Mustards are great. Except they are all invasive in the US, but you can eat all of it. Root to flower. Not necessarily caloric but in a pinch you'll get vitamins from gathering mustards in the wild.
Arugula is an absolute classic here in Italy on pizza. It's done in a fancy pizza with prosciutto crudo, arugula and parmigiano shavings. It's absolutely delicious and it's considered fancy. The ingredients are all put on the pizza AFTER the pizza is cooked and out of the oven. So you cook your pizza, once it's done you first put the prosciutto crudo, preferably di Parma or another good quality prosciutto crudo. Then the arugula and the parmigiano shavings on top. Bear in mind that italian pizzas are about subtlety. You don't put a ton of toppings. If you want to see how it looks, google "pizza rucola e grana". The fresh rucola on top makes it refreshing, but you also have the saltiness and umami of the prosciutto and parmigiano. You should try it. And Adam is correct when he says that usually you don't eat rucola on its own, but with other ingredients to balance the strong flavor.
funny that this would be considered fancy, as a pizza with very sparse toppings of cheese and rucola would be very cheap. I'm sure you could easily spend more on a sprinkling of cheese than on the rest of the pizza, but that's not so much because that small amount of cheese is expensive, it's rather because the wheat, yeast, tomato, oil, spices and rucola cost almost nothing. if you made a more american pizza with good cheese and good sauce, it would certainly be more expensive.
@@Ass_of_Amalek i guess it's different philosophies. Bear in mind that Italy pizza is personal. It's not meant to be shared. Everyone gets his own. While in America from what i can see pizza is usually meant to be shared, so it stands to reason it has more toppings. I also believe it's down to different food philosophies.
My personal research about arugula, after a night of difficult sleeping, is that apparently it is a stimulant and once was banned by the church because it was considered an aphrodisiac. Would love to see Adam expand on these stories. No lie, once after eating a lot (my parents also grow a bunch in the garden), I couldn't sleep at all that night. It might have been something else but blaming the spicy lettuce I complained about all lockdown was the funnier and more useful answer.
It might have been considered as a stimulant by Ancient Greek humoral medicine, because it's "hot" (i.e. spicy) but I don't know about that church ban.
Yeah, that plant has "bolted" and that seriously changes the taste (not for the better). Usually, the best bet is to keep chopping it back to keep it from bolting for a bit (throws out the flower stalk), but even that only works for a while until it decides to go into bolt-mode and at that point, the plant is done. Either pull it out of the ground and toss into compost or see if the seed can be collected..
the tone of your voice made it sound you weren't sure about the chemical names but as a chem student I can tell you that you pronounced them all correctly!
Arugula goes great on some warm ciabatta with tomatoes, red onion, capicola, soppressata, prosciutto, and provolone with some evoo and red wine vinegar. Amazingly delicious. Also, my friend from the Netherlands says they call it "pepper lettuce" where he lives, lol.
Use Arugula's spiciness to your advantage. Use it instead of Lettuce in Sandwiches like a BLT or in a Turkey or Roast Beef sandwich. It adds a Lot of nice notes, especially on sandwiches that can use a hit of mustard.
Hey Adam! When you find Italian words with "ch" the right pronunciation is like a "k", not like a c. Rocchetta with the "c" sound (actually written roccetta) means a small cute rock 😂. The same is for bruschetta and other similar words. The rule is applied to "g" too, "gh" has an hard sound (like "garden") and the "g" has a soft sound (like a "j"). I hope it helped! 🙂
Good point. One addition is that these rules apply before "front vowels" e and i. Before other sounds no need to add the h. And if you need to have a soft sound before a non front vowel, you add in an i which isn't pronounced. So 'caro' and 'che' both have the sound of car. But 'ciao' and 'face' both have the sound of chair. Same for the gs but with the appropriate g sounds
@@danielhill8551 Right, thank you for completing the rule! I didn't write the rest of it because otherwise the message looked to long 🤣 But in that way is surely better!
In Brazil it is called Rucula, and is very common to find in ordinary regular dishes. Here we use to harvest it in the early stage of growing, much before it starts to grow the flowers. This way the flavor is more pleasant and tasteful. It's flavor also tastes better after leaving then a few minutes in a infusion of soy sauce and olive oil.
What I've seen in Brazil is the leaves are larger, more tender, less fibrous, and milder tasting than the arugula I've eaten in Italy and the US. This makes the Brazilian variety conducive to eating whole leaves on their own with your hands, no dressing or other ingredients needed.
Arugula is one of those salad greens that's really great for small farms because it can be grown easily and turns over quickly. I guess people think it's posh because they find it at farmers markets but honestly all salad greens are dead simple to grow.
And to further confuse, there are American wild flowers that are named rockets. Arugula is champ in my limited salad making. Namely, to me, lettuce tastes approximately like wilted cabbage mixed with the spinach mush left at the bottom of the bag. I love essentially every other green, but a stray shred of lettuce has poisoned my sandwich or taco two bites from the piece.
plus the european culinary rucolas are plants of two species (eruca and diplotaxis). I think you can probably eat just about any brassicaceae member for some variant of spicy taste. different breeds of lettuce also have different taste though, maybe try something more bitter than iceberg and romana, like a more red and more curly cultivar.
Lettuce isn't just iceberg or soft lettuce. Mature cos lettuce makes more of meal than iceberg and the soft leaved lettuce. But the brassica family is a broad church, and older cultivars may have more flavour.
In Polish we call it Rukola, so basically the exact same way as they call it in sounthern Italy. Which is kinda weird, given geography, of course, but even more so when you think about the fact that a lot of Italian loan words were introduced into Polish via queen Bona Sforza of Italy, so a rather high-class individual, who most likely wouldn't be speaking 'the language of the poor'
‘wild arugula’ is often used to describe a distinct species: diplotaxis tenuifolia. Conversely, I believe when ‘sativa’ is in the name of a plant, like cannabis, it indicates that it is domesticated, probably from Eruca Vesicaria in Eruca Sativa's case. Diplotaxis Tenuifolia is often a bit hardier and the dramatic cutleaf lobes are aesthetically preferred by some chefs. Some of the more intense arugulas I’ve tried are of this species. IIRC, your summer crop is more spicy because of the heat, yes, but I think because the heat is making it bolt. Many leafies get more bitter or intense when they bolt. Guessing it’s a defense mechanism when they go into that reproductive state, often in response to stress of some sort like heat but also cold, disease, drought or mechanical attacks. Arugula is typically regarded as a cool weather crop. It will overwinter if protected in milder climates and market gardeners typically only grow it in the shoulder seasons because of its propensity to bolt in warm weather
Sativa can refer to any cultivated plant. Often a domesticated form is derived from a plant named sativa, but it also refers to a plant that is merely suitable for cultivation / collecting and planting just as it is, found in the wild.
My husband recently asked me how I felt about arugula. I had only had it from local community farms, so I was like "Uh, it's okay? Really spicy, can't put a lot in a salad. Definitely can't make a whole salad with it." Then he got some from the store and I was like "?!?!?!?" And so I decided it must be like radishes.. some are hotter than others..
The stuff from the store is typically baby arugula. The younger the leaves, the more tender and mild they are. Stuff you're getting from the local farms might be more adult and potentially close to bolting (flowering) when it's harvested, which is when it's a lot spicier.
Arugula or Arugula (PT-BR) is a common food among descendants of Italians here in Brazil as well, the way we use to soften the burn is with a bath in hot bacon oil (with bacon of course) and it is eaten with plenty of corn mush or polenta.
hey adam, as someone who eats a lot of arugula raw(we call it jarjeer) as my grandfather loves to grow a variety of greens, including them, I advise you to find a tamer breed to grow, is probably worth it! they are an amazing snack to munch on, and some sumac,onions, and a splash of lemon, makes you an excellent salad (which with how much you like acid, I think you will love it!)
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 oh absolutely add salt to preference, and good olive oil can make it better, but the heart of the salad is some onions,arugula, sumac, and lemon. ( I prefer red onions, but any kind is fine) some stuff that are good if you have them: pomegranates, walnuts, a fruit molasses that isn't overly sugary(traditionally pomegranate or carob molasses).
Believe it or not, this video has made sense of a long-running point of contention in my family. My mom has functionally zero tolerance for any kind of “pepper spicy,” but a seemingly infinite tolerance for hot mustards or horseradishes. Turns out, for her, capsaicin is bad, isothiocyanates are fine. Who knew.
In Lebanon, we boil arugula more like blanched. Then you fry onions, olive oil is the go to oil but use what you have(lots of them!) assumable it together with lots of lemon juice. You add of course salt and if you want black pepper. This simple dish is traditional Lebanese dish and easy to prepare, you can freeze save for later. Arugula can be tough for not usually eaten but it's so tasty when eaten with fried potatoes. Hope you try this dish. (not spicy at all)
Hey Adam! I think it would be sick if you did a video on malawach, its a bread from the yemenite jews kind of similar to a scallion pancake. its also really fun to make and the cooking and shaping process if visually appealing for a video. Thanks so much for the great content!
Here in Turkey, it is called roka. I can not get enough of it. My favourite green by far. I eat it in almost every salad variant I make. I love to eat it with a bit of mustardy sauce with tomatoes
My parents are southern Italian and we eat a lot of arugula. It sounds a little intense but with some sliced orange, and some garlic, olive oil and salt, tossed, it's a lovely salad for summer and really simple, fun to eat :)
this is totally cool. Thank you Mr. Ragusea! I truly scoffed at the headline. Like, wuhhh? rocket? arugula? wuhhh? no. Wait wait wait…. ok I have to actually click and watch to find out why. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ok. Ope. I scoffed wrongly. Actually, very interesting! I love history! I love language and etymology! I love learning why modern things are the way that they are based upon their histories! Yes again thank you Mr. Ragusea!
Every spring here in Las Vegas NV, I harvest wild mustard greens in my back yard. As they mature, they get more spicy so I try to harvest them before they mature. The mature greens taste like a cross between store bought arugula and horseradish.
I really like arugula! I always thought it tasted peppery/nutty but I'm a smoker so my taste buds are kinda wonky...I can see how home grown arugula would be stronger than what's given at the grocery store
Btw, there are actually two common species of “arugula” the more widespread and white flowered Eruca vesicaria, and the less common yellow flowered Diplotaxis tenuifolia, which is actually a perennial but quite weedy. I tend to find the second species more complex, nuttier and satisfying before it bolts
There is a plant, seemingly much more common in the UK than the USA - possibly due to growing / climate reasons? - called watercress, which is like spinach with the taste of rocket, bough somewhat nuanced. I suppose this is the same reason it is spicy
I accidentally came across the discovery that arugula, particularly the spicier the better, makes some of the best greens with soups, ramens or other such things as I've ever had. Doesn't take much cooking, doesn't break down much but the flavor changes so much to a good thing that I recommend it to everyone now. It's awesome.
I have been playing with adding greens to rice when I cook it... I have also been doing Frank's hot sauce cooked in rice... a spicy green could be a very interesting addition to cooking rice... today I am doing a precooked and crumbled pork sausage, drained of fats and juices... added two cups of rice and 4 cups water and as much spinach as I could add to the sauce pan on and induction cooker set to 20 minutes for the rice to cook and to wilt the spinach... will stir together and probably top with a Tuscan Italian dressing (Kraft)...
The result was good... half the volume filled me up, the rest is in the fridge for later, and am ready for a nap. A pound of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage, 2 cups basmati rice, a couple tablespoons of Frank's hot sauce, a pound of washed spinach, and a couple tablespoons of Kraft Tuscan Italian salad dressing... just in case I want to recreate it.
Fun fact, glucosinolates are heat-stable. You're only denaturing myrosinase when you cook a cruciferous vegetable, so the glucosinolates can't be converted. But, if you reintroduce myrosinase after cooking, it'll get spicy all the same. So, if you want the health benefits, you can have your cooked arugula with a side of raw broccoli or cauliflower, or top it with some powdered mustard, and it'll convert in your stomach, well after the point where it could irritate your mouth and nose.
Grew up in Egypt where arugula/rocket taste is really strong, but I used to love it. Moved to the UK and now buying this tasteless stuff they sell in supermarkets! But lack of taste is not restricted only on arugula, but all the vegetables! I really indulge when I go visit family in Egypt where vegetables still have taste!!
In Greek we call it ρόκα /ɾόka/ (feminine noun) which is a Byzantine Greek borrowing = Italian ruca. The Ancient Greeks called it εὔζωμον /eúd͡zɔːmon/ (neuter) = brothy (the ancients boiled it and consumed it as vegetable stock which they believed was aphrodisiac). The Ancient Greek word has survived in the Modern dialectal αζούματο /azúmato/ (neuter).
Hey Adam! Pretty much any edible leaf is going to taste crappy if you eat the leaves from a plant that is flowering. It may or may not be related to the general bitterness or spiciness of rocket, but for sure any leaf will be almost unpalatable (which Im assuming it is from your facial expressions) at that stage of growth. Also I think its too hot for brassicas in that sun. Try growing them in partial shade during Summer. They will be a lot more delicate and sweeter, and might not bolt so quickly. Another fun fact: In Greek it's called Roka.
Sissy. I love arugula and can't imagine your not enjoying it. I think T, the commenter below, is right. Your plants are bolting, so the leaves are more bitter than before bolting.
Very cool. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
The Google ad algorithm is a funny thing, after the video, it served me a French Burger King Ad where a lady asks for a burger but without the roquette (yeah, rocket), and the employee refuses to (because it's a fancy burger, you know).
Sort of looks like your arugula has bolted, it’s never good after that happens. Even here in the cool PNW it’s a fall/winter/spring crop. First warm day and mine seems to bolt. I bet it’d be easier to eat if you tried growing it in cool weather!
kale is lehtikaali, just kaali is simply cabbage, but perhaps it could be more accurately translated as brassica, as that in turn is kaalit, since more or less every brassica ends in -kaali in finnish.
I don't find grocery store bought arugula that spicy but comments here are saying because of the heat of summer growing and letting it go to flowering is the reason. I like it steamed down and cooked into an omelette makes it perfect.
that's known to be the case with all leafy greens. concentrations of all sorts of substances we taste as bitter and the like (which typically are produced by plants to deter animals from eating them) start out low in parts of the plant that only just grew, and then continuously increase. flowering is generally recognised as indicating low edibility, though I think this is not so much a binary thing of the taste changing rapidly only as the plant flowers, but rather it's because the flowering period on most plants stops or heavily slows down the growth of leaves, and then the leaves that are there continue to age and become more bitter. usually a plant that's still growing will have leaves and stems that are softer and a lighter green colour at the tips of stems and branches, and those will be the least bitter, while the oldest, darkest and hardest leaves are the most bitter (except for those oldest ones at the bottom potentially going yellow from nitrogen deficiency or the like, the light colour there probably doesn't correlate with light taste. I've never tried those since they're very unappealing).
I LOVE those etymological excursions! However, I find it hard to read through such entries as in the OED. Could you, one day, take as along through such an entry, please, teaching us how to read - and understand - it, Adam? Thank you. (If you think this is rather something for "Ask Adam" in the Pod, I could also email you the question.)
my favourite thing about rocket is that it grows wild in my garden and mowing the lawn makes it smell like a salad bar my second favourite thing is the taste. it's my favourite leafy green. sandwiches, salads, anywhere someone would put some lettuce I just use rucola instead
Here in Germany we call this plant "Rucola". And I don't know whether or not we have a different variety, but I always thought of "Rucola" to be more bitter than anything else. Certainly more bitter than spicy.
I (from Hamburg) got me some Rucola a few weeks ago, and it was crazy spicy when eating it on its own. Was glad to read the spiciness could be dealt with by adding sugar to the dressing, which I did using honey. Made myself a very tasty salad with that.
@@louisana "Garten-Senfrauke" or "Ölrauke", to be precise. I did a bit of reading and there indeed are different varieties of arugula. Eruca sativa, which Adam talks about in the video, and Eruca vesicaria. Sativa seems to me to be a subspecies of vesicaria, but I'm not an expert in these things. So far I also couldn't find out whether arugula around here is any different than the one Adam has. I mean, I kind of had different types of arugula before. Like, sometimes the leaves are paper thin, other times they appear more succulent and even a bit like peach skin (like, with tiny hairs or something). Maybe the latter simply stem from older plants, I don't know. What a weird herb it is.
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 I used a bought salad herbs mix that you need to add to a water and oil mixture (those don't really mix of course, but you pour them into the same container). Added just a little honey into in the mix and poured that over the chopped vegetables. (The salad herbs mix I used is Knorr Salatkrönung Gartenkräuter, in case you live in Germany too.)
I looked at a Bergamo dialect dictionary which report "ricola" for arugula, stating it was called in Italian (1700s Italian spoken by literate Lombards, basically another language to today's Italian) "Ruchetta".
Love spicy arugula. I find it also tends to have a savory taste to it I don't get in other greens. When I first had it in high school, my friend described the taste as peppery chicken.
It is very interesting actually how similar and also different Greek pronunciation is. They still use Arugula but Rocket is just Roka, and arugula is the more domesticated plant that you find in stores but Roka is the more wild version, it is more spicy but particular more irony, personally I grew up eating Roka and for me is still spicy but I feel the irons more particularly like a spinach but with more fiber
I always hear people say arugula is spicy, but I've never once felt that way. I LOVE the taste of it, like I don't even see the point of buying other greens if I can get arugula.
Hi, another rather useful video. I always wondered why some (but which) Anglophones called rocket arugula? Now I know. Here in Turkey we call the little devils roka (pronounced like rocker screamed by Rob Halford in any given Judas Priest song, probably Greek origin). They are all around the parks all year round and it is probably my favourite free grub...and people maw them as weed. We probably have a milder variety, deducing from your face. I probably can eat them every day happily. Oh and ours have yellow flowers like mustard...and they taste wonderful as well...yep the flowers. Cheers.
I like to think some Italian migrated to the US and tried to tell someone "it's a rucola!" In the most stereotypical Italian accent, hand gestures and all, to which the listener assumed they said arugula.
4:35 Yes, horseradish is a brassica. But it is not from the same wild ancestor as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts! Mustard greens seem to have a more complicated origin. But horseradish is its own species.
Your mistake is eating it by itself, that's why it's "too spicy". You don't need to cook it, or to mix it with other salad, you need to eat it with something that complements it. The classic dish is rucola with Parmesan "chunks" (scaglie) and Parma ham. My favorite way to eat it is in a piadina (kind of like a burrito), with Parma ham, balsamic vinegar glaze, caramelized onions, rucola, and squacquerone. Heat the piadina with the vinegar glaze and caramelized onions, and then add everything else cold, the rucola adds the perfect "spicyness" to the filling, it's amazing.
It's interesting that arugula gets its spiciness from the same compounds that are in mustard. Here in Sweden the traditional word for the plant is "senapskål", which directly translates as "mustard kale". IMO that's a perfectly good word for it, but apparently it didn't sound fancy enough because now it's been replaced by the Italian "ruccola".
I have defective nerves that don’t really transmit "heat" from capsaicin or similar foods. Maybe that’s why I enjoy arugula in my salads so much - I get the peppery flavor without any pain. I don’t like bland salads at all, but I’ll eat a salad of mixed greens containing arugula any time. Now I know why.
The pain receptors involved in the pungency of isothiocyanates and capsaicin are actually my areas of expertise. So isothiocyanates primarily activate TRPA1 which gives the sharp piercing pain of wasabi/horseradish and interestingly extra virgin olive oils (due to the high poly-unsaturated fatty acid content). They are also located in your nasal cavity and lungs which is why the more volatile compounds (like isothiocyanates) burn up through the back of your nasal passageway and why extra virgin olive oil can make your cough. Tear gas and mustard gas are examples of a highly potent activators of this channel. Interestingly, due to its function as a chemo-nociceptor (reactive chemical sensor that signals pain), it is generally highly desensitising through this mode of action and acts to sense reactive molecules in the air or in your mouth and deliver sharp pain and/or coughing reflex and then stop. On the other hand capsaicin activates TRPV1, which in the mouth primarily acts to sense noxious heat which sensitises the channel. This is why when you eat something a little too hot and slightly burn your mouth it is more sensitive to any amount of warmth, even if the following bites aren't at a scolding temperature. It is also why capsaicin (like in chilli) can hurt more in foods that are too hot. Capsaicin itself is also lipophilic (soluble in oils and not water) so it is more likely to 'cling' to the mouth and also why fatty foods like milk or yoghurt can help a bit with the pain, they dissolve some of the capsaicin coating the mouth. Another fun TRPV1 fact is that ethanol (standard alcohol) lowers the temperature threshold at which TRPV1 activates, so it's not directly causing the burning sensation, but causing your own body heat to activate the channel and produce the feeling of burning. This is also why drinking colder ethanol (like shooting spirits from the freezer) doesn't burn as much, the sub-zero temperatures of the spirit cool the mouth and throat to a temperature that doesn't activate TRPV1 and in turn doesn't burn as much. Both these channels have many more functions and are involved in the development of many inflammatory and age related diseases (as well as epilepsy and migraines). They are ancient channels, existing in pretty much all eukaryotes (all life that isn't bacteria) and have some really interesting, and annoying to study, quirks that make it hard to develop therapies for the diseases they are involved in. But research is advancing and it's a hot, and disgruntled, topic in the field of pharmacology
For me it´s the perfect additional topping for most types of pizza. Depending on it´s level of spice it will be just a hand-full or up to a "green field".
20 years ago on my first visit to Venice, I got dirty looks for ordering "arucola". My host explained that the word is rucola, or LA rucola with the feminine definite article. Southern Italian dialects shorten the definite article from la to a-, which is why Americans call it "arugala", a word that make people wince in Northern Italy. This explains the cognates in Northern Europe.
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Arugula is spicy but I think part of why it's particularly unpalatable to Adam here is it's gone through the hormonal changes to form a flower stalk, called "bolting" in common garden parlance. When leafy greens like spinach, lettuce, and brassicas grown for leaves go to flower, they tend to produce additional bitter flavor compounds to protect them from bugs and herbivores during their final reproductive stage of life. The particular spicy compounds in arugula are still present in it's leafy stage, but they are less concentrated and balanced by the sweeter flavors of most tender leafy greens.
This.
Leaves also generally tend to shrink during this stage becoming drier and more fibrous. I remember when I worked on a farm in July and we had to pick all the flowers from the basil to keep it worth selling.
@@charlietudju8238 my basil always starts doing this (more compact, firm and bitter leaves) after a couple months, even though I'm regularly cutting it back to prevent it from flowering. IDK what it is I'm doing wrong.
@@tiarkrezarYou're not doing anything wrong. Once the temp reaches a certain point, basil will bolt faster than you can prune it
@@sangha1486 I figured it's something like that. I just wanna have good basil for more than like 2 months out of the entire year :(
@@tiarkrezar
If its bolting faster than you can cut it then you should just let them go to seed tbh. You'll at least be able to get a couple years worth of seeds from it. Then you can use it for next years crop or for a fall crop.
Farmer here: in your area (7b I’d guess) arugula is only an early spring crop. Your arugula is very bolted, you should never harvest greens when bolted, even iceberg lettuce is inedibly bitter when bolted. However, arugula is especially fickle, even just growing it when the days are consistently hitting above 80 for a few days will make it wildly bitter even before it bolts. I only grow it in the winter in my high tunnel.
what does "7b" refer to?
@@tyber_roman313 The USDA Hardiness Growing map that classes parts of the US based on average minimum winter temperatures.
Can confirm, 35 years gardener... I let a lettuce go this year though and it grew into the most ornamental red Christmas tree shaped beauty, so sometimes things still surprise me.
@@darcieclements4880 Bolted lettuce is really beautiful! If I was an ornamental gardener I'd let all my lettuce bolt. Unfortunately, I've got to clear bed space for the next crop.
@@tyber_roman313 USDA hardiness zones
Adam,you have to harvest before it bolts like that. It’s a short window in summer, but if you catch it when the leaves are still small and close to the ground it’s much milder.
Also Plant some in August for the fall. It won't bolt and like all brassicas can take a frost which makes it sweeter.
I continue to eat mine after it bolts and its not AS good as the young stuff but ive never had a reaction like Adam's and id never describe it as tasting like a fart. I would eat arugula absolutely every day if i had it
My parents grow a lot of arugula and I absolutely devour it all when I'm visiting. With some lemony dressing it goes amazingly well with chicken-rice type dishes.
Now that sounds heavenly.
I had it on a burger once, was pretty good too.
4:45 Small pedantic correction here: While the two parts of glucosinolate are indeed derived from glucose and an amino acid, they are no longer called that. I would normally excuse this but the part on the right is chemically extremely different from an amino acid, so I had to call it out. The part on the left is called a thioglucose (aka glucose with sulfur attached). The other part is called a sulfated aldoxime, sulfated because of the SO3 that's attached instead of hydrogen.
Two reasons why an aldoxine is so chemically different from an amino acid is that an amino acid never has a double bond on the nitrogen and the nitrogen is never directly connected to the oxygen, there's always a carbon atom in between. Stuff like that is a big deal in chemistry!
MVP comment making sure people get the facts right
Thank you!
In Greek it is called “roka”. It was considered mostly a weed or at least goat feed for decades. Only use I remember as a child was an assorted wild greens casserole (very specific locally to my island of Kefalonia). When it became a trendy item in the 90’s my mom used to make fun of tourists in the restaurant asking for the SO hip “rocket/Parmesan” salad. She regarded it goat feed and thought we were robbing people selling them weeds.
I personally like its peppery bite mixed in salads but not much on its own.
I didn't know roka and aragula are the same thing. I'm lebanese and moved to the US to discover aragula. In lebanon, we have roka. I'm not much into any of them, so I never made the connection. Also, if I remember right, roka is much spicier, which makes sense as americans have bred the flavor out of everything.
Same in Germany: ‘Rauke’ was seen as a weed that was known as edible but no one would actually eat it outside some very specific regional dishes…
Its good on pizza.
Interesting! I lived in rural East Africa for a time and my local friends taught me to forage for a very delicious green to add to our meals. Turns out it was amaranth, which most people consider a weed. I found some growing wild in my yard in East Texas!
@@tonymouannes bred but yeah
Me and my fiancee grew arugula a few summers back and it was completely inedible. This explains why. Fantastic video!
A few summers ago? What you waiting for, put a damn ring on it already 😅😅
Do it!! Get married already
wishing you a happy marriage
My parents grow arugula and I never had store bought until I moved out and was so pissed at how weak it was. Love that pungently sharp spice. So good.
Arugula is great in cold sandwiches, perfect second breakfast for summer time.
Bread, as little mayo as the bread needs, arugula, some lean cold cut meat, pink pickled onions (mine have pickled hot peppers in there too), cold cut meat, arugula, littlest mayo, bread. The cold cuts can be different meats for variety and the second layer of arugula can be some lettuce instead.
The bread and the cold cuts give it a satisfying chewiness and body, the arugula and pickles give it a crunchy contrast in texture and a spicy + acidic bite, and the mayo brings the creaminess that rounds it all out.
You know it
I make one with pesto and about half as much greek yoghurt with salt and pepper and lemon juice to taste as a sauce, add some chicken, as much arugula as you can stomach for bitterness, some variety of small tomato for a little acidity, juiciness and a heterogene texture, and mozzarella for creaminess and fat. All in all, fairly balanced flavorwise if a little bland with the upside that you can pretend it's "healthy."
@@personmcpeopleface266 I wonder if it's "bland" because it's missing some bites of intense and different flavor.
Slivers of parmesan tossed with the arugula so that they don't slip out, red pepper flakes stuck on the mozz, or maybe even a leaf or two of mint could be all it needs.
Or you could try taking the minimalist approach. Deconstruct the concept of this sandwich, reduce it to the bare minimum of what it is to you and reconstruct.
With less stuff going on the remaining things should pop more and that might fix the perceived blandness.
@@PetroklosZDM I think he's missing roasted peppers, preferably kept in oil with garlic and other flavorful things.
The plant is called Senapskål in Swedish. Literal translation would be mustard-cabbage.
But the leaves are generally called and sold as Rucola or Ruccola.
And was shunned and despised for so many years, but slap a new name on it, put an italian chef or something on TV using it, and suddenly you have great demand. Branding is important, it's why I maintain the opinion that Kålpudding (lit. Cabbage-Pudding) has a "branding" problem, it's meatloaf with cabbage served with gravy, it's great.
Mustards are great. Except they are all invasive in the US, but you can eat all of it. Root to flower. Not necessarily caloric but in a pinch you'll get vitamins from gathering mustards in the wild.
The plant and the leaves both are called rucola in Dutch :D
In Germany, it's classically called Rauke, but in the past 2-3 decades, it has been marketed as Rucola and become much more hip.
Arugula is an absolute classic here in Italy on pizza. It's done in a fancy pizza with prosciutto crudo, arugula and parmigiano shavings. It's absolutely delicious and it's considered fancy. The ingredients are all put on the pizza AFTER the pizza is cooked and out of the oven.
So you cook your pizza, once it's done you first put the prosciutto crudo, preferably di Parma or another good quality prosciutto crudo. Then the arugula and the parmigiano shavings on top. Bear in mind that italian pizzas are about subtlety. You don't put a ton of toppings. If you want to see how it looks, google "pizza rucola e grana".
The fresh rucola on top makes it refreshing, but you also have the saltiness and umami of the prosciutto and parmigiano. You should try it. And Adam is correct when he says that usually you don't eat rucola on its own, but with other ingredients to balance the strong flavor.
funny that this would be considered fancy, as a pizza with very sparse toppings of cheese and rucola would be very cheap. I'm sure you could easily spend more on a sprinkling of cheese than on the rest of the pizza, but that's not so much because that small amount of cheese is expensive, it's rather because the wheat, yeast, tomato, oil, spices and rucola cost almost nothing. if you made a more american pizza with good cheese and good sauce, it would certainly be more expensive.
@@Ass_of_Amalek what was the point of this comment
@@Ass_of_Amalek i guess it's different philosophies. Bear in mind that Italy pizza is personal. It's not meant to be shared. Everyone gets his own. While in America from what i can see pizza is usually meant to be shared, so it stands to reason it has more toppings. I also believe it's down to different food philosophies.
@@fiftyclown what was the point of this comment
There's a pizza place in Minnesota that has a pizza with sausage, mushrooms and arugula and it's delicious
My personal research about arugula, after a night of difficult sleeping, is that apparently it is a stimulant and once was banned by the church because it was considered an aphrodisiac. Would love to see Adam expand on these stories. No lie, once after eating a lot (my parents also grow a bunch in the garden), I couldn't sleep at all that night. It might have been something else but blaming the spicy lettuce I complained about all lockdown was the funnier and more useful answer.
It might have been considered as a stimulant by Ancient Greek humoral medicine, because it's "hot" (i.e. spicy) but I don't know about that church ban.
It wasn’t banned by the entire church, it just was banned from being grown in some monasteries.
There are relatives that have medical uses, maybe confused between them?
Yeah, that plant has "bolted" and that seriously changes the taste (not for the better). Usually, the best bet is to keep chopping it back to keep it from bolting for a bit (throws out the flower stalk), but even that only works for a while until it decides to go into bolt-mode and at that point, the plant is done. Either pull it out of the ground and toss into compost or see if the seed can be collected..
Yep it’s like eating cilantro after it’s bolted and being surprised when it doesn’t taste good. That’s what happens when plants bolt
Chemist here - your pronunciation of the chemicals was great 👍🏻
“Let’s dispense with the etymology before we get to the chemistry” lol
the tone of your voice made it sound you weren't sure about the chemical names but as a chem student I can tell you that you pronounced them all correctly!
Arugula goes great on some warm ciabatta with tomatoes, red onion, capicola, soppressata, prosciutto, and provolone with some evoo and red wine vinegar. Amazingly delicious. Also, my friend from the Netherlands says they call it "pepper lettuce" where he lives, lol.
Use Arugula's spiciness to your advantage. Use it instead of Lettuce in Sandwiches like a BLT or in a Turkey or Roast Beef sandwich. It adds a Lot of nice notes, especially on sandwiches that can use a hit of mustard.
Hey Adam! When you find Italian words with "ch" the right pronunciation is like a "k", not like a c. Rocchetta with the "c" sound (actually written roccetta) means a small cute rock 😂. The same is for bruschetta and other similar words. The rule is applied to "g" too, "gh" has an hard sound (like "garden") and the "g" has a soft sound (like a "j"). I hope it helped! 🙂
Good point. One addition is that these rules apply before "front vowels" e and i. Before other sounds no need to add the h. And if you need to have a soft sound before a non front vowel, you add in an i which isn't pronounced. So 'caro' and 'che' both have the sound of car. But 'ciao' and 'face' both have the sound of chair. Same for the gs but with the appropriate g sounds
@@danielhill8551 Right, thank you for completing the rule! I didn't write the rest of it because otherwise the message looked to long 🤣 But in that way is surely better!
“this salad is spicy” might be the most white people thing i’ve ever heard. but fr i love arugula, great video as always adam
"White people can't handle spice" mfs trying to consume milk
Racism. Reported.
I mean dude literally even said at the end
It's not about race, boo.
In Brazil it is called Rucula, and is very common to find in ordinary regular dishes. Here we use to harvest it in the early stage of growing, much before it starts to grow the flowers. This way the flavor is more pleasant and tasteful. It's flavor also tastes better after leaving then a few minutes in a infusion of soy sauce and olive oil.
What I've seen in Brazil is the leaves are larger, more tender, less fibrous, and milder tasting than the arugula I've eaten in Italy and the US. This makes the Brazilian variety conducive to eating whole leaves on their own with your hands, no dressing or other ingredients needed.
Arugula is one of those salad greens that's really great for small farms because it can be grown easily and turns over quickly. I guess people think it's posh because they find it at farmers markets but honestly all salad greens are dead simple to grow.
it's expensive because of it's shelf life.
And to further confuse, there are American wild flowers that are named rockets.
Arugula is champ in my limited salad making. Namely, to me, lettuce tastes approximately like wilted cabbage mixed with the spinach mush left at the bottom of the bag. I love essentially every other green, but a stray shred of lettuce has poisoned my sandwich or taco two bites from the piece.
Those are also brassica plants.
plus the european culinary rucolas are plants of two species (eruca and diplotaxis). I think you can probably eat just about any brassicaceae member for some variant of spicy taste. different breeds of lettuce also have different taste though, maybe try something more bitter than iceberg and romana, like a more red and more curly cultivar.
Lettuce isn't just iceberg or soft lettuce. Mature cos lettuce makes more of meal than iceberg and the soft leaved lettuce. But the brassica family is a broad church, and older cultivars may have more flavour.
If you bag of leaves contain mush IMO they are too old.
the spinach mush is the worst!
Spinach should never go in salad mixes, it goes bad before everything else and ruins the whole thing
In Polish we call it Rukola, so basically the exact same way as they call it in sounthern Italy. Which is kinda weird, given geography, of course, but even more so when you think about the fact that a lot of Italian loan words were introduced into Polish via queen Bona Sforza of Italy, so a rather high-class individual, who most likely wouldn't be speaking 'the language of the poor'
Arugula (rucula) is incredibly popular here in Argentina. Also italian influence... great geen! We eat it with cured ham, pizza, salads, everything.
‘wild arugula’ is often used to describe a distinct species: diplotaxis tenuifolia. Conversely, I believe when ‘sativa’ is in the name of a plant, like cannabis, it indicates that it is domesticated, probably from Eruca Vesicaria in Eruca Sativa's case. Diplotaxis Tenuifolia is often a bit hardier and the dramatic cutleaf lobes are aesthetically preferred by some chefs. Some of the more intense arugulas I’ve tried are of this species.
IIRC, your summer crop is more spicy because of the heat, yes, but I think because the heat is making it bolt. Many leafies get more bitter or intense when they bolt. Guessing it’s a defense mechanism when they go into that reproductive state, often in response to stress of some sort like heat but also cold, disease, drought or mechanical attacks. Arugula is typically regarded as a cool weather crop. It will overwinter if protected in milder climates and market gardeners typically only grow it in the shoulder seasons because of its propensity to bolt in warm weather
Sativa can refer to any cultivated plant. Often a domesticated form is derived from a plant named sativa, but it also refers to a plant that is merely suitable for cultivation / collecting and planting just as it is, found in the wild.
My husband recently asked me how I felt about arugula. I had only had it from local community farms, so I was like "Uh, it's okay? Really spicy, can't put a lot in a salad. Definitely can't make a whole salad with it." Then he got some from the store and I was like "?!?!?!?" And so I decided it must be like radishes.. some are hotter than others..
Radishes are brassicas as well, so ... yes! 😀
yeah i was weirded out by the video since i grew up with store bought rucula (what we call it here) and i certainly wouldnt consider that spicy
The stuff from the store is typically baby arugula. The younger the leaves, the more tender and mild they are. Stuff you're getting from the local farms might be more adult and potentially close to bolting (flowering) when it's harvested, which is when it's a lot spicier.
Most home grown stuff will take a lot stronger than the store bought equivalent
Arugula or Arugula (PT-BR) is a common food among descendants of Italians here in Brazil as well, the way we use to soften the burn is with a bath in hot bacon oil (with bacon of course) and it is eaten with plenty of corn mush or polenta.
hey adam, as someone who eats a lot of arugula raw(we call it jarjeer) as my grandfather loves to grow a variety of greens, including them, I advise you to find a tamer breed to grow, is probably worth it! they are an amazing snack to munch on, and some sumac,onions, and a splash of lemon, makes you an excellent salad (which with how much you like acid, I think you will love it!)
The best levantine salad!
No oil or salt added, just sumac, onions and lemon juice?
@@erzsebetkovacs2527I'm sure you could try it that way, and customize it to your liking
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 oh absolutely add salt to preference, and good olive oil can make it better, but the heart of the salad is some onions,arugula, sumac, and lemon. ( I prefer red onions, but any kind is fine)
some stuff that are good if you have them:
pomegranates, walnuts, a fruit molasses that isn't overly sugary(traditionally pomegranate or carob molasses).
Believe it or not, this video has made sense of a long-running point of contention in my family.
My mom has functionally zero tolerance for any kind of “pepper spicy,” but a seemingly infinite tolerance for hot mustards or horseradishes.
Turns out, for her, capsaicin is bad, isothiocyanates are fine. Who knew.
In Lebanon, we boil arugula more like blanched. Then you fry onions, olive oil is the go to oil but use what you have(lots of them!) assumable it together with lots of lemon juice. You add of course salt and if you want black pepper. This simple dish is traditional Lebanese dish and easy to prepare, you can freeze save for later.
Arugula can be tough for not usually eaten but it's so tasty when eaten with fried potatoes. Hope you try this dish. (not spicy at all)
Hey Adam! I think it would be sick if you did a video on malawach, its a bread from the yemenite jews kind of similar to a scallion pancake. its also really fun to make and the cooking and shaping process if visually appealing for a video. Thanks so much for the great content!
Here in Turkey, it is called roka. I can not get enough of it. My favourite green by far. I eat it in almost every salad variant I make. I love to eat it with a bit of mustardy sauce with tomatoes
My parents are southern Italian and we eat a lot of arugula. It sounds a little intense but with some sliced orange, and some garlic, olive oil and salt, tossed, it's a lovely salad for summer and really simple, fun to eat :)
Adam is crazy. Arugula is delicious and I would happily eat it every day.
this is totally cool. Thank you Mr. Ragusea! I truly scoffed at the headline. Like, wuhhh? rocket? arugula? wuhhh? no. Wait wait wait…. ok I have to actually click and watch to find out why. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ok. Ope. I scoffed wrongly. Actually, very interesting! I love history! I love language and etymology! I love learning why modern things are the way that they are based upon their histories! Yes again thank you Mr. Ragusea!
Arugula is one of my all-time favorite veggies! Although I'm sure mine isn't as spicy as yours
Every spring here in Las Vegas NV, I harvest wild mustard greens in my back yard. As they mature, they get more spicy so I try to harvest them before they mature. The mature greens taste like a cross between store bought arugula and horseradish.
I really like arugula! I always thought it tasted peppery/nutty but I'm a smoker so my taste buds are kinda wonky...I can see how home grown arugula would be stronger than what's given at the grocery store
Btw, there are actually two common species of “arugula” the more widespread and white flowered Eruca vesicaria, and the less common yellow flowered Diplotaxis tenuifolia, which is actually a perennial but quite weedy. I tend to find the second species more complex, nuttier and satisfying before it bolts
There is a plant, seemingly much more common in the UK than the USA - possibly due to growing / climate reasons? - called watercress, which is like spinach with the taste of rocket, bough somewhat nuanced. I suppose this is the same reason it is spicy
And much more like Arugula soup, watercress soup is amazing
👍🏽🤓👍🏽 Yes !! Hearty 🍲 Bone Broth, with blend of Arugula & Watercress !!
I accidentally came across the discovery that arugula, particularly the spicier the better, makes some of the best greens with soups, ramens or other such things as I've ever had. Doesn't take much cooking, doesn't break down much but the flavor changes so much to a good thing that I recommend it to everyone now. It's awesome.
I have been playing with adding greens to rice when I cook it... I have also been doing Frank's hot sauce cooked in rice... a spicy green could be a very interesting addition to cooking rice... today I am doing a precooked and crumbled pork sausage, drained of fats and juices... added two cups of rice and 4 cups water and as much spinach as I could add to the sauce pan on and induction cooker set to 20 minutes for the rice to cook and to wilt the spinach... will stir together and probably top with a Tuscan Italian dressing (Kraft)...
The result was good... half the volume filled me up, the rest is in the fridge for later, and am ready for a nap.
A pound of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage, 2 cups basmati rice, a couple tablespoons of Frank's hot sauce, a pound of washed spinach, and a couple tablespoons of Kraft Tuscan Italian salad dressing... just in case I want to recreate it.
Fun fact, glucosinolates are heat-stable. You're only denaturing myrosinase when you cook a cruciferous vegetable, so the glucosinolates can't be converted. But, if you reintroduce myrosinase after cooking, it'll get spicy all the same.
So, if you want the health benefits, you can have your cooked arugula with a side of raw broccoli or cauliflower, or top it with some powdered mustard, and it'll convert in your stomach, well after the point where it could irritate your mouth and nose.
Arugula is big in Brazil and I love it. Plus, it goes great in pasta, too.
Grew up in Egypt where arugula/rocket taste is really strong, but I used to love it. Moved to the UK and now buying this tasteless stuff they sell in supermarkets! But lack of taste is not restricted only on arugula, but all the vegetables! I really indulge when I go visit family in Egypt where vegetables still have taste!!
Thank you so much for posting this. I love arugula so much I named my cat after it. He goes by Roo.
In Greek we call it ρόκα /ɾόka/ (feminine noun) which is a Byzantine Greek borrowing = Italian ruca.
The Ancient Greeks called it εὔζωμον /eúd͡zɔːmon/ (neuter) = brothy (the ancients boiled it and consumed it as vegetable stock which they believed was aphrodisiac). The Ancient Greek word has survived in the Modern dialectal αζούματο /azúmato/ (neuter).
Nice video as always, Adam Arugula.
Hey Adam! Pretty much any edible leaf is going to taste crappy if you eat the leaves from a plant that is flowering. It may or may not be related to the general bitterness or spiciness of rocket, but for sure any leaf will be almost unpalatable (which Im assuming it is from your facial expressions) at that stage of growth. Also I think its too hot for brassicas in that sun. Try growing them in partial shade during Summer. They will be a lot more delicate and sweeter, and might not bolt so quickly. Another fun fact: In Greek it's called Roka.
So that’s why my basil tasted awful after a few weeks!
i love the educating!!! Thanks Adam!!
Sissy. I love arugula and can't imagine your not enjoying it. I think T, the commenter below, is right. Your plants are bolting, so the leaves are more bitter than before bolting.
7:02 "its possibly the whitest thing I've said to say that my salad is too spicy" truer words have never been spoken
Adam is the best teacher
Very cool. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
Hell of a statement in the thumbnail
The Google ad algorithm is a funny thing, after the video, it served me a French Burger King Ad where a lady asks for a burger but without the roquette (yeah, rocket), and the employee refuses to (because it's a fancy burger, you know).
Sort of looks like your arugula has bolted, it’s never good after that happens. Even here in the cool PNW it’s a fall/winter/spring crop. First warm day and mine seems to bolt. I bet it’d be easier to eat if you tried growing it in cool weather!
Used to live in Montreal 🇨🇦 and French Canadians called it “Roquette”
Italian Canadians introduced it to 🇨🇦
I appreciate the use of the ESA rocket
Love this, Adam just hanging out, eatin’ shrubs in the garden
loved this video! going to italy next month already knowing what i'm gonna say all the time... Arugalo!!!
I always wondered why this green leaf had so many names. Thank you.
In Finnish it's also called "sinappikaali", which literally translates to "mustard cabbage"
kale is lehtikaali, just kaali is simply cabbage, but perhaps it could be more accurately translated as brassica, as that in turn is kaalit, since more or less every brassica ends in -kaali in finnish.
@@fdagpigj Oh yeah, you're right. I had mixed up cabbage and cauliflower in my head for some reason.
I love arugula. It tastes so good and last longer in the fridge than lettuces. And it can stand up to being on hot food.
I don't find grocery store bought arugula that spicy but comments here are saying because of the heat of summer growing and letting it go to flowering is the reason.
I like it steamed down and cooked into an omelette makes it perfect.
I love growing arugula. It's the only leafy green I've found that the rabbits won't touch.
In my experience arugula becomes noticeably spicier after it has bolted/flowered like the stuff in the video has done.
that's known to be the case with all leafy greens. concentrations of all sorts of substances we taste as bitter and the like (which typically are produced by plants to deter animals from eating them) start out low in parts of the plant that only just grew, and then continuously increase. flowering is generally recognised as indicating low edibility, though I think this is not so much a binary thing of the taste changing rapidly only as the plant flowers, but rather it's because the flowering period on most plants stops or heavily slows down the growth of leaves, and then the leaves that are there continue to age and become more bitter. usually a plant that's still growing will have leaves and stems that are softer and a lighter green colour at the tips of stems and branches, and those will be the least bitter, while the oldest, darkest and hardest leaves are the most bitter (except for those oldest ones at the bottom potentially going yellow from nitrogen deficiency or the like, the light colour there probably doesn't correlate with light taste. I've never tried those since they're very unappealing).
Quite a puckish Adam this morning.
Great topic! Thanks
I always let my arugula flower and seed - I love the smell of those little yellow flowers.
I LOVE those etymological excursions! However, I find it hard to read through such entries as in the OED. Could you, one day, take as along through such an entry, please, teaching us how to read - and understand - it, Adam? Thank you.
(If you think this is rather something for "Ask Adam" in the Pod, I could also email you the question.)
Great information sir! You’ve got a new subscriber.
3 whole minutes of this video actually address the title
From someone studying chemistry, you pronounced isothiocyanate perfectly.
my favourite thing about rocket is that it grows wild in my garden and mowing the lawn makes it smell like a salad bar
my second favourite thing is the taste. it's my favourite leafy green. sandwiches, salads, anywhere someone would put some lettuce I just use rucola instead
Pizza with parmesan, prosciutto and arucula. I love it.
Shout out that kid just pouring hose water on his head at 6:04 he knows what's good
Arugula was introduced to the US by Steve Martin My Blue Heaven. A true classic that does not get enough love.
This actually my favorite salad.
~Also here on Brasil is rúcula, wich is almost the same as Italian...
Here in Germany we call this plant "Rucola". And I don't know whether or not we have a different variety, but I always thought of "Rucola" to be more bitter than anything else. Certainly more bitter than spicy.
The German name for the plant is also "Rauke"
I (from Hamburg) got me some Rucola a few weeks ago, and it was crazy spicy when eating it on its own. Was glad to read the spiciness could be dealt with by adding sugar to the dressing, which I did using honey. Made myself a very tasty salad with that.
@@louisana "Garten-Senfrauke" or "Ölrauke", to be precise.
I did a bit of reading and there indeed are different varieties of arugula. Eruca sativa, which Adam talks about in the video, and Eruca vesicaria. Sativa seems to me to be a subspecies of vesicaria, but I'm not an expert in these things. So far I also couldn't find out whether arugula around here is any different than the one Adam has.
I mean, I kind of had different types of arugula before. Like, sometimes the leaves are paper thin, other times they appear more succulent and even a bit like peach skin (like, with tiny hairs or something). Maybe the latter simply stem from older plants, I don't know.
What a weird herb it is.
@@scelestion What did you use for the dressing?
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 I used a bought salad herbs mix that you need to add to a water and oil mixture (those don't really mix of course, but you pour them into the same container). Added just a little honey into in the mix and poured that over the chopped vegetables. (The salad herbs mix I used is Knorr Salatkrönung Gartenkräuter, in case you live in Germany too.)
I looked at a Bergamo dialect dictionary which report "ricola" for arugula, stating it was called in Italian (1700s Italian spoken by literate Lombards, basically another language to today's Italian) "Ruchetta".
Try them chopped up small and mixed with unsalted tomatoes and a little bit of lemon/vinegar.
Love spicy arugula. I find it also tends to have a savory taste to it I don't get in other greens. When I first had it in high school, my friend described the taste as peppery chicken.
It is very interesting actually how similar and also different Greek pronunciation is. They still use Arugula but Rocket is just Roka, and arugula is the more domesticated plant that you find in stores but Roka is the more wild version, it is more spicy but particular more irony, personally I grew up eating Roka and for me is still spicy but I feel the irons more particularly like a spinach but with more fiber
I always hear people say arugula is spicy, but I've never once felt that way.
I LOVE the taste of it, like I don't even see the point of buying other greens if I can get arugula.
In Egypt, we call it Jirjir and it's eaten raw.
Hi, another rather useful video. I always wondered why some (but which) Anglophones called rocket arugula? Now I know. Here in Turkey we call the little devils roka (pronounced like rocker screamed by Rob Halford in any given Judas Priest song, probably Greek origin). They are all around the parks all year round and it is probably my favourite free grub...and people maw them as weed. We probably have a milder variety, deducing from your face. I probably can eat them every day happily. Oh and ours have yellow flowers like mustard...and they taste wonderful as well...yep the flowers. Cheers.
I like to think some Italian migrated to the US and tried to tell someone "it's a rucola!" In the most stereotypical Italian accent, hand gestures and all, to which the listener assumed they said arugula.
arugula is my favorite green. It needs so little to taste good, like a simple vinaigrette will do the job.
4:35 Yes, horseradish is a brassica. But it is not from the same wild ancestor as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts! Mustard greens seem to have a more complicated origin. But horseradish is its own species.
I was in agonizing fear thinking I was about to hear Adam do a presentation WITHOUT mentioning - Brits. Thank god he spared me of that agony.
Your mistake is eating it by itself, that's why it's "too spicy".
You don't need to cook it, or to mix it with other salad, you need to eat it with something that complements it.
The classic dish is rucola with Parmesan "chunks" (scaglie) and Parma ham.
My favorite way to eat it is in a piadina (kind of like a burrito), with Parma ham, balsamic vinegar glaze, caramelized onions, rucola, and squacquerone.
Heat the piadina with the vinegar glaze and caramelized onions, and then add everything else cold, the rucola adds the perfect "spicyness" to the filling, it's amazing.
It's interesting that arugula gets its spiciness from the same compounds that are in mustard. Here in Sweden the traditional word for the plant is "senapskål", which directly translates as "mustard kale". IMO that's a perfectly good word for it, but apparently it didn't sound fancy enough because now it's been replaced by the Italian "ruccola".
I quite like rocket on its own. But will need to try growing it this year as i fanly have a garden
I have defective nerves that don’t really transmit "heat" from capsaicin or similar foods. Maybe that’s why I enjoy arugula in my salads so much - I get the peppery flavor without any pain. I don’t like bland salads at all, but I’ll eat a salad of mixed greens containing arugula any time. Now I know why.
The pain receptors involved in the pungency of isothiocyanates and capsaicin are actually my areas of expertise. So isothiocyanates primarily activate TRPA1 which gives the sharp piercing pain of wasabi/horseradish and interestingly extra virgin olive oils (due to the high poly-unsaturated fatty acid content). They are also located in your nasal cavity and lungs which is why the more volatile compounds (like isothiocyanates) burn up through the back of your nasal passageway and why extra virgin olive oil can make your cough. Tear gas and mustard gas are examples of a highly potent activators of this channel. Interestingly, due to its function as a chemo-nociceptor (reactive chemical sensor that signals pain), it is generally highly desensitising through this mode of action and acts to sense reactive molecules in the air or in your mouth and deliver sharp pain and/or coughing reflex and then stop.
On the other hand capsaicin activates TRPV1, which in the mouth primarily acts to sense noxious heat which sensitises the channel. This is why when you eat something a little too hot and slightly burn your mouth it is more sensitive to any amount of warmth, even if the following bites aren't at a scolding temperature. It is also why capsaicin (like in chilli) can hurt more in foods that are too hot. Capsaicin itself is also lipophilic (soluble in oils and not water) so it is more likely to 'cling' to the mouth and also why fatty foods like milk or yoghurt can help a bit with the pain, they dissolve some of the capsaicin coating the mouth.
Another fun TRPV1 fact is that ethanol (standard alcohol) lowers the temperature threshold at which TRPV1 activates, so it's not directly causing the burning sensation, but causing your own body heat to activate the channel and produce the feeling of burning. This is also why drinking colder ethanol (like shooting spirits from the freezer) doesn't burn as much, the sub-zero temperatures of the spirit cool the mouth and throat to a temperature that doesn't activate TRPV1 and in turn doesn't burn as much.
Both these channels have many more functions and are involved in the development of many inflammatory and age related diseases (as well as epilepsy and migraines). They are ancient channels, existing in pretty much all eukaryotes (all life that isn't bacteria) and have some really interesting, and annoying to study, quirks that make it hard to develop therapies for the diseases they are involved in. But research is advancing and it's a hot, and disgruntled, topic in the field of pharmacology
lol at "the whitest thing I've ever said is 'my salad is too spicy'" - that's a great line.
For me it´s the perfect additional topping for most types of pizza.
Depending on it´s level of spice it will be just a hand-full or up to a "green field".
20 years ago on my first visit to Venice, I got dirty looks for ordering "arucola". My host explained that the word is rucola, or LA rucola with the feminine definite article. Southern Italian dialects shorten the definite article from la to a-, which is why Americans call it "arugala", a word that make people wince in Northern Italy. This explains the cognates in Northern Europe.