Tender is the bite.
Are you one of the Oddboxers on our pick-your-own trial? As well as giving our community the chance to create their pear-fect box, it’s given us a whole heap of insights into the fruit and veg you love the most. And week after week, there’s one clear winner: broccoli heads.
When growing long-stem or sprouting varieties of broccoli, the stems shoot out from the plant at ground level but not until a single, early, head has grown at the centre of the plant. To encourage growth of the spears, farmers have to cut that first head. These are known as broccoli heads – as our longstanding grower at MWW Farms explains:
“We have to take the heads out of the top of the plant to initiate and promote the growth of the side stems. This is where Oddbox comes in. Lots of these early stems would otherwise just be picked and left in the field – a huge waste of fresh and tasty veg.
“We also rely on Oddbox to save our surplus produce, and any that doesn’t meet supermarket specifications. At MWW we produce around 1,900 tonnes of broccoli which we harvest from June to September – but we’ve even been known to have so much that we’re still picking in January.
“Although we can sometimes send surplus to wholesale or even donate to charity, this isn’t a reliable secondary market. It’s one of the reasons we love working with Oddbox – not just for broccoli, but for the many, many other crops we grow all over the world too. We’re a family business and working with people we trust really makes a difference.”
Recipes to dig into
So once you’ve been lucky enough to nab a bag of broccoli heads in your box, what’s the best way to eat it? A quick straw poll of the Oddbox office gave the green light for our Broccoli Pizza recipe. Our Green Bean Orzo also has lots of fans.
But for our friends at MWW, the true broccoli pros, this is all that’s needed: “We like to steam our broccoli heads and have it with a roast dinner. Or simply use it in a stir fry. Delicious.”
Of course, there’s no broccoli bias here: we love every variety from bushy heads to purple sprouting stems. But it’s always good to know your favourites so our sourcing team can keep their ears to the ground for any bumper crops in need of a home.
And if there’s a broccoli recipe we should know about? Don’t keep it to yourself – write to us at community@oddbox.co.uk and share the floret-y fun with the community. You brock.
