Have you tried…TARO?

You may have seen Taro starting to appear on your fresh produce shelves recently and wondered…”What the…?” – certainly the checkout girls at my local don’t know what it is!

Taro is a root vegetable with a similar texture and flavour to potato.  It grows in very wet areas, similar to rice, and the tuber is the edible part.  It can be used in pretty much the same way as a potato – roasted, boiled, steamed, mashed, even grated & mixed with coconut milk to make a kind of pudding.  It’s not exactly the same as potato – for one thing the Taro’s starch molecules are the smallest in any vegetable, making it easier to digest. This makes mashed Taro more like a paste than potato mash.

The taro originated in the Polynesian islands, and was considered akin to a god in Hawaiian culture.  The plant is used not only for food, but also has uses to treat burns, insect bites and rashes, helps to clot blood from injuries, is rich in calcium, iron, riboflavin and thiamine, has no cholesterol and almost no fat! 

AND…it looks awesome, with vibrant purplish streaks running through the white flesh, and tastes great!

Here are a couple of sites to tell you a little more about Taro…

http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Colocasia/

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/horticulture/5224.html

http://www.coffeetimes.com/taro2.htm

Thanks for reading

Be excellent to each other

Shane Pinnegar

May 2005