Eating Black Nightshade Berries and Greens (Solanum nigrum and friends)

Black Nightshade Berries and Greens: an Edible Plant Eaten Around the World

Sam Thayer’s essay:
https://www.foragersharvest.com/uploads/9/2/1/2/92123698/black_nightshade.pdf

Casual video going over a few key points on this plant.

Timestamps:
00:40 Harvesting
01:05 Identification + look alike infographics
02:22 Cooking steamed nightshade greens
02:45 Casual DTC discussion and eating
04:40 Nastergal Konfyt / nightshade jam

Background
Black nightshade is having a moment and a number of my friends have been talking about the plant over the last few years. It’s comical how much misinformation there is on the edibility of this plant considering the vast amount of ethnobotanical documentation of its consumption around the world.

Black nightshade plants are grown all around the world. Guatemala, China, India, Camaroon, South Africa, Kenya, and many more places have traditions of cooking the greens and or the fruit.

Most of the traditional recipes for the plant call for the greens and they’re excellent. Similar to mild-tasting tomato greens that I could eat by the pound.

The fruit (also cultivated under the name garden huckleberry) has a deep purple juice and can be used in any recipe calling for blueberries or huckleberries. Such a cool plant!

A lot more info and background in the post on my website linked above.

Kind of a quick and dirty overview uh relatively quick of a very misunderstood very delicious plant black night Shader plants in the uh solanum nigram solanum negam complex first and foremost you need to read Sam ther’s article on this plant the essay that he wrote is so much

More informative and articulate than I could ever hope to be just infinitely more knowledgeable about this plant that I think anyone else is so read that it’s link to the video description but black night shap plants are going to be very common Garden weeds this is my friend’s

Garden in Minnesota they’re all over the place and they’re related to tomatoes I don’t have a lot of footage of harvesting here but I’m going to mention that instead of picking these by hand I wanted images of the complete fruit you should put a tarp underneath the plant

And then shake it to get the ripe fruit just like you would if you had a ground cherry Bush which these are related to ground cherries too so that is going to be the most efficient way to harvest the fruit you’ll see why too CU I had to

Remove all the cxes individually okay some look likes to go over this is very quick and dirty I just have two little infographics to go over okay deadly night shades on the right it has larger singular fruit calic wher than the fruit and purple to Brown flowers and black

Nightshade has white flowers green unripe fruit and the fruit always grow bunched if you can tell the difference between colors you can tell the difference between these plants the other one to keep a lookout for is uh s on the camera and this one is very common I’ll see them growing together

The ones you don’t want to have red fruit when ripe and purple flowers so if you can tell the difference between white and purple you’re going to be fine and those aren’t lethal either but you can see I harvested all my berries from my yard like this and I don’t want to

Strain the seeds out so I had to sit at a table and pick the pick the callx off of the top of each one and the stem for like two hours so that was a huge pain and most people are going to consume this around the world as a leafy green

That’s cooked it could also be a juice crop just look at the color of that juice it’s sweet it tastes like Sweet Tomato blueberry juice okay steam Nightshade greens the first thing that you should make so easy you will see that the greens that I have these are

Slightly older than I would than is ideal because you can see some of the inflorescent young flowers have started on some of those they’re not fully formed but that means that the greens might be a little more chew and they might be a little bit more bitter so

Next time I would probably blanch them if they had the unrip flowers on but here is just a little taste test all right here goes my first black Nightshade greens with the black nightshade berries well I ate some before the greens are a little bit bitter when they’re steamed a little bit

Less bitter when they’re blanched they are excellent they’re better than tomato leaves I tried cooking tomato leaves and I like them better as an herb these have a traditional use around the world as a cooked leafy green which I find so fascinating like people are basically cooking a variety of tomato

Leaves as a green leafy vegetable and enjoying it yeah man they have a special flavor uh it they have a stronger taste which I think is awesome uh I love I love all the greens and they’re they’re nice and tender quiet Kitty I really like having a few of the just the

Fresh berries the fresh black nightshade berries in with the greens you get a little bit of sweet and then a little bit of bitter from the greens like what a cool way to enjoy the whole plant because the berries the berries are very sweet they’re almost like a ground

Cherry they I would say they’re more comparable to the flavor of a ground cherry than they are to like regular Tomatoes they definitely have like a sweetness to them and when I talked to Sam the about them yesterday he told me that he liked to put black nightshade

Berries in applesauce which makes total sense I mean they’re a berry more so they just have like a a good deep green flavor kind of like green beanie or green peppers almost but not too much it’s it’s kind of hard to describe but it’s great like what a

Fantastic green I can’t wait to cook them in a blend but now I want more and I think I may have to grow some the other thing I knew I had to make which is the reason I to I spent all the time trimming the little berries is naso Ki

This is like a Dutch or maybe it’s a Zulu traditional preserve so the plant is also called Garden Huckleberry it’s been sold like that for over a hundred years it’s not a huckleberry it’s related to tomatoes don’t want to use the word Nightshade when they’re selling

It so you just make a jam out of him you can substitute black nightshade berries in any recipe to use a blueberry or a huckleberry they’re really really cool I mean just look at that color I could sit and watch that pan cook I did find for

Just basic preserves I did need to puree the fruit to kind of break them up release those seeds because that’s part of the character you don’t want to strain those seeds out because when it’s all nice and sweet and Rich and fruity like that see it looks just like

Huckleberry or blueberry all those little seeds have a very comparable texture to ground cherries or fig seeds so it’s kind of like blueberry fig Jam from a plant that’s related to tomatoes that most people think is probably going to kill you but it’s actually traditional food around the world hope

You learned a little bit about black Nightshade such a cool Plant there’s a lot more information on the post on my website that’s linked at the top of the video description and make sure to read Sam’s essay on this plant too because because it is so well done thanks for watching