Is okra a superfood? While it might not be as nutrient-dense as veggies such as spinach and kale, it’s packed with some valuable nutrients. It was being grown as far north as Philadelphia since the mid-1700s. While records of okra during early American colonial times are lacking, it must have been common among French colonists. People have been growing okra in the U.S.

Okra was apparently discovered in the Abyssinian center of origin of cultivated plants, an area that includes present-day Ethiopia, the mountainous or plateau portion of Eritrea, and the eastern, higher part of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. This gooey aspect of the pods actually provides some really incredible benefits, especially those related to prevention of diabetes (more on that later). That mucilage or “slime” inside of the pods consists of exopolysacharrides and glycoproteins. The inside of pods contain oval, dark-colored seeds and a good amount of mucilage, which is a gelatinous substance that makes it a great addition to recipes that you want to thicken. The only parts of the plant that is eaten are the unripe pods or fruit. Is okra a fruit or vegetable? It’s technically a fruit because it contains seeds, but it’s most commonly considered a vegetable, especially when it comes to culinary uses. This plant is native native to Africa and the tropics of the Eastern Hemisphere. Okra ( Abelmoschus esculentus) is a hairy plant that belongs to the mallow family ( Malvaceae). Let’s start off with the most basic question: What is okra? No matter how you enjoy it most, it’s a good source of fiber, B vitamins, magnesium, folate and more.

Okra has many interesting uses and is known to be an economically important vegetable crop because its fresh leaves, buds, flowers, pods, stems and seeds all have value. It can be used in salads, stews, fresh or dried, and fried or boiled. The plant itself resembles the cotton plant, but it has much larger and rougher leaves and a thicker stem. The whole plant has an aromatic smell resembling that of cloves. When we think of okra we usually think of Southern cooking, including cajun and creole cuisine, but did you know that this veggie also has numerous nutrition benefits too?Ĭonsidered an edible ornamental flowering hibiscus, okra is an annual, erect herb with stems that contain stiff hairs. A photo of that record Heavy Hitter plant can be found on page one of the Heavy Hitter Okra thread on the green country seed savers website.Okra, both a common pod vegetable and nightshade vegetable (but it’s actually a fruit!), is also called “gumbo” in the U.S. (Thank you though, for the glowing recommendation). This means that his seeds have the ‘potential’ of producing another world record of that magnitude, but probably shouldn’t be expected to happen on a daily basis. Kind of like the World’s Record Tomato of the Domingo variety, which was grown by Dan Sutherland in 2018. It was well on its way to 650 when it was killed. That one plant had 65 branches, each branch bearing pods, each branch is capable of bearing ten pods on average, so there was a potential for pod production in the 650 range, except for an early frost that year clipped that plant in its prime, so we will never know what it was truly capable of. Kight is referring to was my personal best record, back in 2011. Actually, that harvest of 44 pods in one day only happened once, but Heavy Hitter does average over 100 pods per season, per plant, and often hits in the 250 pod range. I’ve got to add a slight retraction of sorts to the post above.

Chinese okra