Indigenous Healing: Sunchoke

With the current interest in indigenous foods, Sunchoke tops the list for being hardy, prolific and nutritious.

Sunchoke: Native Sunflower and Food

Jerusalem Artichoke

By Chris Anderson

A few Jerusalem artichokes or Sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus) go a long way. A friend gave me nine small tubers about 12 years ago that has grown into a harvest of several five-gallon buckets worth of food each fall.

Also known as sunroot, sunchoke, and earth apple, these hardy little tubers are neither artichokes nor are they from Jerusalem. They are in the aster family and a native sunflower, with the genus name from the Greek words Helios meaning sun and anthos for the flower. Tuberous is from Latin meaning tuberous referring to the edible roots.

Sunchoke is a native plant which grows with exuberance in well-drained soil and unless every small tuber is harvested in the fall, will continue to spread, sprouting the following spring. Their strong growth habit is well-suited for areas with plenty of room to expand, intermixed with other native plantings or planted on slopes for which soil stabilization is needed. As a wild plant, they can be found growing along old railroads, in fields, and along roadsides.

With the current and very exciting interest in indigenous foods, Sunchoke or Jerusalem artichokes top the list for being hardy, prolific and nutritious. They are similar to potatoes and have a fresh, healthy “earthy” flavor and have been cultivated by Native American Indians for centuries from the First Nations in the northeast to the Seminole in the South and as far west as traditional Kiowa and Paiute lands.

They look like knobby little potatoes or ginger root with a white flesh covered in a thin brown skin. With a taste like crisp water chestnuts or fresh jicama, they can be sliced thin and thrown into stir-fries at the last minute for a crunchy addition or prepared like potatoes by boiling or baking and adding to casseroles or soups for a hearty winter meal. They are also distilled into a spirit, particularly in Germany and Italy.

An Old Food has New Relevance: Unlike potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes (Sunchoke) are low in starch, making them a good choice for those struggling with diabetes by providing a nutritious food that helps regulate blood sugar levels.

According to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Service, American Indians and Alaska Natives are 2.2 times more likely to have diabetes compared with non-Hispanic whites. There has been a 68% increase in diabetes from 1994-2004 in the same group aged 15-19 years old and many individuals across Indian Country have pre-diabetes and have not yet been diagnosed.

The diabetes epidemic has reached such proportions that awareness is growing about the negative health issues resulting from purchased and packaged grocery-chain foods and the benefits of indigenous foodways as a return path to health.

For instance, the fame of the Sioux Chef has helped raise awareness of the flavorful and abundant choices of indigenous foods and their rich traditions. An organization like the Native American Food Systems Initiative are doing good work in sharing the knowledge and understanding between native foodways, physical health, sovereignty and our connection to the earth.

For thousands of years, Indigenous people have studied, protected and perfected seeds and practiced agriculture that suited their specific local growing conditions. In Enduring Seeds, Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Preservation, the author Gary Paul Nabhan describe the connection between protecting native culture itself along with native agrobiodiversity as the two are intimately intertwined. He makes the case that protecting native food and its genetic diversity is critical to ensuring the future safety of food.

He writes “locally adapted cultivated plants…represent distinctive plant populations, adapted over centuries to specific microclimates and soils. They have also been selected to fit certain ethnic agricultural conditions; the field design, densities, and crop mixes in which they have been consistently grown. The aesthetic selection has also taken place, with the taste, color, and culinary preferences of a particular culture have favored the forms and chemical characters of some plants over others.”

In urging protection of native crops, Nabhan notes ‘one can hardly create a dune-shaped Hopi crop in a lab overnight. A biotechnologist can’t simply transfer one or two genes from variety A to variety B to get the same adaptive qualities’ (Nabhan, p.72).

As with almost any native plant, tree, shrub or flower, Jerusalem artichokes have medicinal properties. We are learning (or re-learning) this knowledge, but a tremendous amount of expertise was lost following European contact. When 90-95% of all Native American Indians were killed by disease brought by non-natives, a tremendous amount of knowledge across numerous disciplines was lost within a very short time.

Growing and Harvesting: These perennial sunflowers are drought tolerant and have bright yellow flowers but without the dark brown centers which bear the seeds of commercial sunflowers. They bloom late in the season – September into October in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia – making them a valuable nectar source for bees and other pollinators when most other flowers have already gone to seed. They can reach amazing heights, up to ten feet tall, and goldfinch and swallows, in particular, enjoy perching on them to gain a vantage point over the garden to spy tasty caterpillars which may be visiting other crops.

Harvest time is after the first killing frost, though the tubers can remain in the ground over the winter in natural cold storage. It is easiest to chop down the stems, move them aside and use a digging fork to turn the soil to uncover the roots. For well-established plants, have buckets and/or boxes handy, as one plant in the right growing conditions can produce 75-200 tubers.

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After harvesting, place the stalks back over the garden bed to give bees and other insects a place to overwinter. The stalks of these vigorous growers will help prevent weeds from sprouting the next spring and, as they decompose, will feed the soil, a hallmark of organic gardening. Generally, no additional fertilizers are needed to grow Jerusalem artichokes, as they thrive in most sandy loam soils with a neutral pH.

Preparation and Nutrition: Jerusalem artichokes have an enzyme called inulin which is not metabolized by the human body. It has nutritional benefits as a prebiotic which supports robust and healthy intestinal flora. However, caution should be taken when first consuming sunchokes as inulin may cause gas in some individuals.

Sunchokes can be peeled or not, finely sliced and added to fresh salads or added to stir-fries like water chestnuts. They can be boiled and pureed to add body and nutrition to bread, pancakes, and soups, roasted with olive oil and herbs as a side dish or added to soups and casseroles along with potatoes and other vegetables. They can also be prepared like mashed potatoes and served with butter or pickled. They can be sliced and fried like potato chips, though they may not become as crispy as potato chips. They are low in fat but moderately high in calories, similar to potatoes, contain fiber and antioxidants such as vitamin A, C, and E. They are particularly high in potassium, copper, and iron.

Sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke is a nutritious and healing Native American Indian crop. Just be sure to allow plenty of room for them to grow, both in height and abundance.

Does anyone know a Native American Indian name for this plant? If so, we would like to know. Please email canderson2011@hotmail.com.

i Indian Health Service ii Gary Paul Nabhan, Enduring Seeds, Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Preservation, (Tuscon, The University of Arizona Press, 1989), p.71.