Artichokes : Basics

The main reason most people eat artichokes only steamed is they don’t know how they should be cleaned. And who can blame them? Look at an artichoke and then try to figure a way to get it trimmed down to just the edible portion. It seems like a tough job. Really it’s not.

While cleaning artichokes is not difficult, it does provide graphic evidence of just how much of the vegetable is inedible. A couple of weekends ago, I cleaned six pounds of baby artichokes in less than an hour. When I was done, there was less than 1 1/2 pounds of choke left . . . but it was a good 1 1/2 pounds.