How to eat a Jerusalem artichoke without the side effects
Posted by Alan | Under Ingredients Wednesday Feb 17, 2010
It’s commonly understood that the Jerusalem artichoke is not actually a real artichoke and also does not have origins in its name sake.
However, many people believe that it also causes people to produce excess wind, which may be to the fact came from North America and the actual edible part is not found in the artichoke part of the plant.
However, the second part about the wind is true, due to the fact that it has a large amount of inulin in it that is similar to fructose, which humans are not able to digest due to a lack of enzymes. Therefore, when it comes to digesting the fruit often, intestinal bacteria take over, which are able to convert it into store energy, but as a result release carbon dioxide, which is where the wind comes in.
In order to become seriously uncomfortable however you would need to eat a lot of the vegetable although combining it with something such as a potato helps to reduce the gas production.
Thus, if you really want to have a Jerusalem artichoke then you should cook them for 12 hours and at least at a temperature over 90C, which helps reduce the amount of insulin that is produced and thus reducing the amount of gas that is produced.
An interesting fact is that in North America the Jerusalem artichoke is actually referred to as a sunchoke making it a close relative of the actual artichoke.
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It’s inulin, not insulin!
Yes – well spotted – the original post is now updated. Thanks.
Try having some yourself – it only takes a TINY tuber to turn this house into a tornado!
It doesn’t matter if it’s mixed with potato either in my experience but I’ve recently heard that cooking it with a bay leaf will help with the wind.
Yes it gives you wind, but does taste nice. If you cook them in the skins the skin should just slide off. Also, who cooks things for 12 hours!!!