All about… Malabar Spinach

It’s a good thing Popeye didn’t live in Texas. Spinach was brought over from cool European climates, so it’s not a fan of Texas summer’s blistering heat and parching drought. Our soaring temperatures do a good job of incinerating any hopes of a summertime spanikopita. But wait… a hero emerges! Who is this surprisingly ornamental, dog-day-defying, vine-y virtuoso?

Why, Malabar Spinach of course!

Know it:

Malabar spinach isn’t actually spinach. True spinach bears the binomial epithet (there’s that fancy phrase again! It’s just the technical name for the official name of plant) Spinacia Oleracea. Malabar spinach on the other hand has the name Basella Alba. The two are not particularly related, they’re in the same order but that’s pretty far up in terms of the biological organizational ladder.

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As you can see, the two are quite different!

The only closely related plant I could find of any culinary importance is the Ullucus tuberosus, a root vegetable grown in the Andes. According to my research, Ulluco, as it’s commonly known, is second only to the potato in economic importance in some areas of the Andes (if Wikipedia is to be believed).

Looks like quite an interesting plant, but that will have to be an article for another day.

True spinach allegedly was first cultivated in Persia (modern day turkey) and its cultivation spread throughout Europe. Malabar spinach on the other hand is native to the Indian subcontinent on through to Southeast Asia. The Malabar Coast refers to the southwestern coast of India, so it stands to reason that this region must be the plants namesake.

Malabar spinach has plenty of other names too, such as Ceylon spinach, climbing spinach, and vine spinach. If you read the latter two names and deduced that this plant has a vining habit, then props to you — you’re right!

There are two major varieties, red stemmed and green stemmed. The red stemmed variety is called “Rubra” and is sometimes even listed as a different species, Basella Rubra.

While they’re both ornamental, the red stemmed cultivar has that pop of contrast. Other than the stem color there doesn’t seem to be too much difference, although I’ve heard once or twice that the green stemmed variety tastes better. I’ve only grown the red stemmed kind thus far, so I can’t speak to the veracity of that statement.

Malabar spinach grows as a vine, twisting around anything it can find as a support. In my experience, plants do better when they have tall vertical pole to climb up. They can grow on trellises and fences too but the vines really like going straight up. They have a bit more trouble spreading out laterally — they don’t have tendrils like peas or cucumbers do.

Meet it

This plant has been steadily increasing in popularity and, as summers throughout the country seem to be getting hotter and hotter, I expect the trend to continue. We’re almost to the end of September and there still hasn’t been a daily high below 90!

I’ve seen Malabar Spinach for sale in Asian markets once or twice. It also pops up occasionally in farmers markets during the summer. I’ve never bought Malabar spinach as produce, and I don’t really intend to — it just grows too darn easily. I might, however, make an exception to my rule of “don’t buy what you can grow” just to see if the green stemmed cultivar has a different flavor.

Seeds for this plant are readily available online, and organic seeds are easy to find, if that’s important to you. Seeds can also be found in most garden centers and even big box stores. I’m fairly sure all the major seed companies carry Malabar spinach nowadays, so there’s no excuse to not try growing this plant!

Where I am in Texas, you can even find potted plants to transplant.

This guy was actually at HEB! (HEB, for those of y’all outside of Texas is a grocery store, and yes like all things in Texas its bigger and better)

I wouldn’t bother with a transplant though, seeds are cheaper and easier. If you’re interested in collecting them yourself, here’s how they grow.

They start out as these little sprays of white flowers with light blue tips. They’re actually quite beautiful if you look at them up close.

Then, the berries form, ripening from closest to the stem to farthest.

The berries look quite a bit like pokeweed berries. Unlike pokeweed, though, I’ve never read anything about the berries being poisonous, but to be fair I’ve never eaten any quantity of them to try and find out. They’re rather bland and are mostly seed anyway. When crushed, they’ll stain anything they touch purple so watch out!

If you have a friend who grows this plant, just grab a few of the berries and you’ve got seeds of your own! I personally just let them dry as is — I don’t bother with rubbing off the fleshy berry part or cleaning them, but if you’d like to do that, knock yourself out.

I’ve read that this plant can be propagated by cuttings as well, but I’ve never tried it. I’m always throwing stems into the compost or chopping and dropping them on the ground as mulch and I’ve never once seen the stems grow roots. Come to think about it, I’ve never even seen the living stems that are in contact with the ground grow roots.

Side note: growing roots where the stem touches the ground is fairly common phenomenon in plants, if you’ve grown tomatoes you’ll know what I’m talking about. The technical name is adventitious roots (roots that form on plant organ other than roots, i.e. a stem or sometimes even a leaf)

Anyway, based on my personal observations of Malabar spinach, my opinion is that cuttings just aren’t worth the trouble. It makes so many seeds and they germinate so easily, why bother! Save your propagation space for something else.

Grow it

Malabar Spinach LOVES heat. It really can’t do without it. In cool, and even warm-ish weather it just sulks and grows infuriatingly slowly. Once the thermometer hits 90 degrees, it goes off like a shot!

The first time i tried growing Malabar spinach was actually before I moved to Texas, and was still living in DC. Let me tell you, my plants stayed the same size for weeks. When the warmest part of the summer arrived they rambled up a few feet, but I was generally dissatisfied with them and didn’t attempt to grow them again.

That is, until I arrived in the great state of Texas.

Here it grows like a weed. No really, it self seeds all the time and I always have Malabar spinach growing somewhere in the summer, whether I bothered to plant it or not. If you live in a colder place than I do which, let’s be honest, is most states in the U.S., you’re going to want to start this plant indoors very early.

If you live in a place where the summers don’t get much higher than the 80’s you may not even want to bother with Malabar Spinach. A big part of the appeal of this plant for me is that it grows and prospers all summer long. Texas summers are a tough time to grow much of anything, especially edible plants. Most traditional vegetable garden plants just give up by the end of July, if not sooner.

It can handle drought reasonably well, but it’s not a xeric plant by any stretch of the imagination. Your plants will do much, much better if you give them a drink when they get thirsty and droopy.

I should mention that this plant is a perennial in frost free areas, so if you like in the Rio Grande Valley or southern florida you’ll have this plant year round. Where I live, as soon as the weather gets cold, these plants either die or just stop growing and are overtaken by the competition. I don’t bother giving my plants any winter protection, they’ll just grow from seed again next year.

Eat it

So the important question here is… what does it taste like?

You know me, I don’t like to sugar coat things (and if you don’t know me, now you know that I don’t like to sugar coat things). The truth of the matter is, true spinach is far superior in both flavor and texture. It just is. It’s not for nothing that spinach is the quintessential leafy green.

That doesn’t mean that Malabar spinach is bad though! Malabar spinach can be downright delicious if you harvest and prepare it properly.

I think having the word spinach in its name does this plant a disservice. It invites a direct comparison to actual spinach, and it can’t compete. It’s just like many fruits that have strawberry in their name, such as strawberry guavas or the strawberry tree. They’re good in their own right, just nowhere near as wonderful as real strawberries are. It’s the botanical equivalent of parking a Honda Civic next to a Ferrari.

So, let’s talk texture.

Remember how in my article about Nopalitos I talked a little bit about the substance that many plants produce called “mucilage”? It’s basically a long winded way of saying that the leaves can be slimy.

This molecule is actually one of the plant kingdom’s many chemical defenses. You see, plants never signed a treaty like the Chemical Warfare Convention. Plants have been waging war with complex chemistry long before the first cavemen even decided to throw rocks at each other. Mucilage is one of the ways plants protect themselves, albeit not as obvious a defense mechanism as poisons, thorns, psychoactive chemicals, or alleopathy.

Mucilage makes the plants’ leaves unappealing to the majority of insects. To be fair, sliminess isn’t a texture that most people enjoy, either.

Humans, however, are smarter than bugs. Well, in general anyway. There are some really smart bugs and some really dumb people out there so I don’t like to make generalized statements (I kid, I kid).

There are ways we can reduce the sliminess! The first way is to pick the leaves when they’re young and small. They’re tasty enough to be used raw in a salad, although I wouldn’t recommend using them as the principle salad green, mix them in with something else.

Another tool we humans have in our arsenal: Heat!

Sauteing these babies over high heat evaporates the water and gets rid of the unpleasant texture.

The other thing we can do is be judicious in what kind of dishes we use Malabar spinach in. Dishes like soups, stews, saag, and dips are a good choice for this veggie. The thickness it contributes can actually improve these dishes, or at least not hurt them.

I hope I’ve convinced you to let this leafy green ramble over your garden next summer! It provides a bounty of nutrition for almost no work, and thrives during the time of year that leafy greens are hard to come by! Don’t be dependent on the grocery store for your greens, grow them yourself!

Join me next time, and I’ll show you how to make a French classic with a Texas twist, Malabar Spinach Souffle!