Fried Minted Artichokes – A new addition to the Spring garden
These fried artichoke hearts are perfect for Spring. Every spring, Diane and I go through the annual “What veggies are we going to plant?” ritual. First the weather starts to warm and we begin to crave more than leafy greens, sugar snap peas, radishes, and carrots. We’ll hit Home Depot and nearly buy a bunch of boring varieties which we don’t really want but that is all they have because is it too early in the season. We’ll barely hold off on purchasing, then two days later the weather will drop winter cold again and we congratulate ourselves on not buying too early. Repeat two more times.
Fried Artichoke Hearts
Finally we can’t take it anymore and the inevitable excursions to our favorite nurseries and farmers’ markets takes place. By now the cool stuff is available and we buy twice the amount of varieties of what we originally intended. Mostly tomatoes, bell peppers, chilies, and eggplant.
Good nurseries and growers are dangerous. The 3″ pots costing a mere $2-4 each. We’ll find some of our favorite varieties: tomatoes like the Anna Russian, Kentucky Beefsteak, Sun Golds (which we don’t even need to buy since it always reseeds itself, but we do anyway), chilies like the padron, shishito, a medley of habaneros.
Of course in searching for the favorites, we’ll discover a bunch of new-to-us types and have to get a few of those. Somehow the bill ends up being $70-$80 of $3 or $4 items by the time we hit the register. Then a couple days later we think of a favorite we forgot to get and head back to the nurseries.
Repeat two more times.
Growing Artichokes
One veggie I always want, but we never buy, is to grow artichokes. They just take up soooo much room and I can’t convince Diane to sacrifice some of her radish or beet soil allocation. I’m not giving up my arugula space either and it is unthinkable to reduce any of the tomatoes or chilies growing room.
But this year we’ve added a couple more raised planters, and I finally badgered Diane enough that she relented one corner to artichokies. Especially after reminding her that she could use the blossoms for styling and table decorations!
The main reason I want to grow the artichokes is for the baby artichokes. I love them. So cute and tender I could just eat them up. Wait… I do eat them up. Strip them, then slice, fry, salt, and devour them. Sounds a little S&M like, but it sure is tasty.
Here’s a recipe for fried artichoke hearts. It’s one of our favorite ways to cook up the baby artichokes, Fried Minted Baby Artichokes. Tasty little tidbits we tend to eat much more than we intend to. One note on making them, be very liberal in stripping away the outer leaves. As a general rule, the darker the color the leaf, then tougher it will be after frying. Usually I’ll strip almost half of the leaves off of store bought baby artichokes.
If you like the crunchy outer leaves feel free to strip a little less. You can always strip more leaves off after frying if you change your mind. You can also make this with the “adult” artichokes, but you might want to scoop out the choke (the little hairs over the heart.)
We’d love to hear what everyone else is planning for or excited to grow this year. What’s your favorite varieties or what are you trying to make room for. Enjoy these fried artichoke hearts!
-Todd
crispy crunchy tender baby artichokes
Fried Minted Artichoke Recipe
Ingredients
- 6 Baby Artichokes
- 5 cloves Garlic
- 20 Mint Leaves (about), finely sliced
- 1/2 Lemon , cut into wedges
- Sea Salt , to taste
- oil for frying
Instructions
Prep the Artichokes
- Strip away the outer leaves until they are a very light green (usually about 1/3 -1/2 of the outer leaves). Trim the end of the stem and the top of the artichokes. Slice in half.
Fry
- Pour enough oil in a large saute pan to fill 1/4" deep. Heat over med-high heat. When oil is hot, place artichokes cut side down in a single layer (fry in batches if necessary) scatter garlic cloves between the artichokes and add half of the mint.
- Fry until garlic and artichokes until lightly golden (about 2-3 minutes) then flip and fry until just done (about another 2 minutes). Make sure to pull garlic out just before being it is fully golden as it will continue to cook a bit more after being removed from oil and will become bitter if overcooked.
- Drain on paper towels, squeeze a little lemon juice over artichokes, season with sea salt and toss with remaining mint leaves. Plate with additional lemon wedges. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Nutrition Information per Serving
Here’s more great artichoke recipe ideas!
I was wondering if you could dry fry these? I grew up eating artichokes but have never had a baby one before. Are the hairs you see on the heart of the adult a problem on the baby ones?
That is the beautiful part of the small chokes, the hairs are harmless. You don’t even know they are there. I am now curious about dry frying them too. If you try it let us know. Next time we get some baby artichokes, or if ours ever start to put out, then this is the next experiment! Thanks for sharing the idea!
LOVE fried artichokes! one of my favorites. A few times cooking artichokes I have had similar problems with bitterness. I have researched and found out that they could of one, not been cooked long enough or cooked to much. Or that they weren’t super fresh. Any ideas? I love chokes and it makes me sad that I had to experience a really bitter one! boo
This is awesome. I”m lucky enough to have a healthy crop growing of both artichokes and mint, so I cut down some of each, and fried them up. I’ve tried a lot of ways to cook artichokes, and I think this is the best. Of course — they’re fried!!!
I’ve always wondered the best way to try artichokes and now I know. I can’t wait to try this recipe. I may also look at growing some for myself if I can’t find the nice baby ones you described. Thanks for this great recipe idea.
WOW this sound amazing!!! Saw baby ‘chockes at the farmer market couple weeks ago but didn’t know what to do with them. Now I can’t wait for Saturday to go, buy some and try this.
Thanks
I’d never have thought to fry them. I need to try that. I once grew artichokes in my front garden. Went out one morning and they were all gone. Someone came during the night and stole the lot. They had obviously planned it as the tops were neatly chopped off with a knife.
I think this is one of my favorite set of pictures yet (which is saying a lot since I love all of your work!)
And, I’m beyond excited to try this recipe!
Came across the recipe by accident (I had just purchased a good amount of small artichokes) – simple, fast, and utterly delicious! Now I will read the blog and other recipes. Takk, hvit ris par!
Hello Todd & Diane,
Sorry if I’m out of the topic…I’ve been having troubles with many links ,almost a week now, Is it something that’s happening to me ,or to anyone else ? 🙁 I miss your recipes,photos,words…BIG HUG from Italy.
S&M and artichokes were something I had never put together in one sentence. Nice!
Love the mint-choke combo. Garden Geek? Wish I could say that was my thing. I am a major GG in the sense that I can’t keep anything alive longer than it takes to hit the soil. xo
As a member of the garden geek club here in the PNW, I am going to plant watermelon radish this spring so I can pickle them. I love eggplants…the long purple ones and I have seedlings already growing. Another member of our garden geek club (an old Italian gardener friend) gave me tomato seedlings he calls Banana and he motioned to me they are the huge, loooong paste tomatoes. I am lucky enough to have a friend who grows artichokes. She has them at the side of their houses (2 houses back to back).
In the front yard, I will make room for a pink blueberry bush called Pink Lemonade. I know it will give me enough pink berries to put in a pitcher of Pink Lemonade in the summer…
Beautiful photos. I love artichokes but have no clue how to grow them. I did, however, find this incredible farmer’s market here in Houston that had what I had been searching for! Fava beans.
Hey guys–OMG that looks deeeelish! I’m growing 4 artichoke plants of my own (didn’t pay attention to the guy when he said at full grown the plants are 5’x5′–doh!) in So Cal (Culver City). Half of my globes are nice and tight and closed and the other half are opening as they grow, I think that’s not good but I really don’t know. What I’ve found is that in the partially open ones there are tons of earwigs–aaargh! I’m starting to find earwig damage all over my garden, do you guys have any of these little boogers? How does one combat them? Everything I google tells me how to trap them, but with the millions of them out there that doesn’t seem like a good option…
On a side note, after your spread in Sunset I went out and got myself a Yuzu tree, can’t wait til it fruits!! Thanks for you site-it’s so lovely on so many levels!
jess
Ahhh, the fried artichokes remind me of Italy…. and I just today went to Home Depot and did that exact same thing. Walked around with a couple small pots of mediocre tomato plants until I convinced myself I didn’t even want these and it was too early for a good selection. I have just a little, long dog run of a garden beside my house, but have it sectioned off with bricks and I usually plant salsa fixings and bruschetta fixings of roma, pear tomatoes, jalapeno, basil and lemon cukes. This year I’m trying the peas and beans to grow up the poles because the sun hits the wall so well in the afternoon. Wish me luck 😀 We’ll see how it goes/grows 😀 Sending hugs to you both ~
If I could grow artichokes in Minnesota, I would. I love them, and they are one of my kids’ favorites. My 4-year-old begs me to buy and grill them almost weekly. I’ve never tried them fried, though. I’ll have to give it a whirl once those California ‘chokes make their way here.