Broccolini

The easiest, sweetest broccoli you'll cook. Tender-stemmed broccolini, gai lan, and purple sprouting broccoli, all eaten whole with no peeling or waste.

Storage

Store it unwashed in a loose plastic or produce bag in the crisper drawer. It wants humidity without sitting wet, so don't seal it up tight, and don't wash it until you're ready to cook. Kept that way, it holds up remarkably well.

Keeps For

Farm-fresh broccolini keeps 3–4 weeks in the crisper, depending on the variety—it holds far better than most people expect. If you're buying it from the store or don't know how old it is, assume more like 4–7 days. Either way, it's at its best while the stems are still crisp and the florets tight.

Flavor Profile

Sweeter and milder than a broccoli head, with tender, almost asparagus-like stems and delicate florets. Raw it's grassy and crisp; a quick cook turns it sweet, nutty, and silky. Gai lan (Chinese broccoli) runs a little more mineral and pleasantly bitter, purple sprouting broccoli is on the sweet end, and the broccoli crosses sit right in the middle—but they all cook the same way. The whole spear, leaves and buds included, is done in the same few minutes, so there's none of the florets-versus-stems juggling that regular broccoli needs.

How to Prep

There's barely any prep. Rinse well, then trim just the dry cut end off each stem—everything above it, leaves included, is tender and edible. Like asparagus, the odd stem—maybe one in a hundred—has a slightly woody base; if you're dicing them into a dish and want even texture, taste the bottom slice after trimming to check, though it won't matter when you serve them whole. If a stem is especially thick (gai lan sometimes is), halve it lengthwise so it cooks at the same rate as the florets. The main rule is don't overcook: these go from bright and snappy to drab and floppy fast, so pull them while they still have some bite.

Ways to Cook

1 Stir-fry or steam gai lan and finish with oyster sauce—the classic Cantonese side
2 Blanch or steam 2–3 minutes and dress with lemon, olive oil, and salt
3 Char in a hot pan or on the grill until smoky and just tender
4 Roast at high heat for a few minutes—watch the florets so they don't burn
5 Sauté with garlic, chili, and anchovy for a classic Italian side
6 Toss whole spears through pasta with parmesan and lemon
7 Add near the end of a stir-fry so it keeps its snap
8 Dip raw or lightly blanched spears into aioli or romesco

Pairs Well With

garlic ginger oyster sauce soy sauce sesame chili lemon anchovy parmesan olive oil almonds walnuts brown butter feta

Good to Know

These are more delicate than a broccoli head—limp or yellowing spears are past their best, so use them fresh. A few open yellow flowers are still perfectly edible but signal it's aging; cook those quickly. Because the florets are small and loose, give everything a thorough rinse to dislodge any grit or bugs tucked into the buds.

Did You Know?

"Broccolini" is a name for a broccoli–gai lan (Chinese broccoli) cross first bred in Japan in the early 1990s. It turns out a whole crowd of vegetables land in the same sweet, tender-stemmed niche: gai lan itself, purple sprouting broccoli, and broccoli-gai lan crosses like kaibroc. We grow a rotating mix, so what's in your share might be any of them—but they all cook the same way.