Broccoli Brassica oleracea var. italica
Peel the stalk and it beats the florets. Cut it thinner so both finish at the same time.
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In the kitchen
Under heat
The florets cook faster than the stalk — cut the stalk thinner, or start it in the pan first, if you want both done together.
Against air
Cut broccoli yellows at the florets within a day or two as the chlorophyll breaks down; that yellowing is the clearest sign it’s aging.
In storage
Keep it dry and loosely wrapped in the crisper. Standing the stalks in water like flowers extends it further if you have the fridge space.
At the shop
Tight, closed florets. Any that have started opening into small yellow flowers are already past peak.
Which variety, for what
- Broccoli crowns
- The dense-headed standard — cut the stalk thinner so it cooks at the same rate as the florets.
- Broccolini
- A cross with Chinese broccoli — thinner stalks, milder, and cooks through in about half the time.
Beyond the kitchen
ONE SPECIES, SEVEN VEGETABLES
Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and collard greens are all Brassica oleracea — one wild species, selectively bred for different parts. Broccoli and cauliflower are the flower buds; kohlrabi is the stem; sprouts are lateral buds.
THE SMELL
Overcooked brassicas release sulphur compounds, which is the entire source of their bad reputation. The compounds build up sharply past about seven minutes of cooking, which is why briefly cooked broccoli smells of almost nothing.
A GENETIC TASTE SPLIT
A variation in the TAS2R38 gene makes some people markedly more sensitive to bitterness in brassicas. People who say broccoli tastes bitter are often reporting something real about their own perception rather than about the vegetable.
BROCCOLINI IS A HYBRID
Broccolini is not baby broccoli — it is a cross between broccoli and Chinese kale, developed in Japan in the 1990s. Purple sprouting broccoli, by contrast, is an older and genuinely distinct European type.
A longer history
Broccoli was developed in Italy from wild cabbage, most likely in the Roman period, and the name comes from the Italian broccolo, a cabbage sprout. It remained an almost entirely Italian vegetable for well over a thousand years — grown, eaten and named in Italy while largely unknown elsewhere in Europe.
It reached England in the eighteenth century, where it was called Italian asparagus, and America with Italian immigrants. Commercial cultivation in the United States began in earnest only in the 1920s, when the D'Arrigo brothers began shipping it from California to Boston, advertising it to Italian-American communities on the radio.
From there it became one of the fastest-adopted vegetables of the twentieth century, and it is now grown at scale in China, India, the United States and across Europe. Its journey from a regional Italian speciality to a global staple took about fifty years, almost all of it after 1920.
