PERENNIALS
Perennials offer new, exciting and complex flavours for us chefs to try! They are any plant that lives for more than two years and they are great for our soils. Our current food system depends on Annual plants that grow and produce food in a single season. These require lots of energy and inputs to produce and varieties are largely grown based on yield over nutrition and flavour. Why are perennials the antidote? We had the Agroforestry Research Trust help us out on this one.
This is Oca - a nutritious potato alternative with a lemony taste.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Perennial foods offer exciting flavours that can bring originality to your menus.
Chefs need to show there is demand. We can encourage farmers to grow climate resilient perennials with a guarantee we will buy them.
Ask your suppliers what perennials they have to offer and put them on your menus.
Get your customers excited about perennials.
Yakon, disco batata and apios!
“Perennials require much fewer inputs, and are the building blocks of stable ecosystems. This generally makes perennial food crops a more sustainable option, as these plants create habitat and sequester carbon, and don’t rely on damaging ploughing practices. They’re also a better option for many farmers, as they have reduced input costs and often require less time tending them.
Excitingly, there are some 7000 perennial crops that can be grown in the UK climate - compared to the 20-30 common annual veg crops. These include all of our nuts and most of our fruit crops, as well as a vast and exciting range of flavours – from spicy Szechuan pepper to aniseed sweet cicely, and tart autumn olives – as well as a whole range of leafy greens and salad leaves. In addition to these exciting flavours, the deep root systems of many perennials help them to access soil nutrients unavailable to their annual counterparts, often making them much more nutritious.”
But there’s a problem: many growers are reluctant to grow less common perennial crops, because they can’t be sure that they’ll be able to sell them. This is where we chefs can help: by creating demand and asking our suppliers about perennial crops, we can encourage growers to embrace the resilience of perennial crops.
