Field Notes: Seconds & Byproducts
Blemished. Cracked. Cat-faced. Pest-pressured. Not every tomato could win a beauty pageant. Every time we harvest any of our vegetables, we set aside the handful that aren’t quite up to market standards of aesthetics. In most cases, these are still perfectly edible, but in farms across the country, produce like this often goes into the compost or the landfill (some estimates say 20 billion pounds annually in the US alone).
But at our farm, these "seconds" are coveted - they go straight to our demo kitchen for different preservation projects, staff lunches, or snacks for visitors. We cut away anything that isn’t usable, and the rest is perfectly delicious, nutrient-rich food. Recently we made some passata - an Italian tomato technique that's somewhere between puree and sauce. It captured all the deliciousness that tomato season has to offer. Likewise, less-than-perfect cukes and peppers are pickled, and put away for later.
There’s also what’s referred to as byproduct, or specific parts of the plant that aren’t typically sellable, but still edible; think carrot tops, broccoli stalks, beet greens, for example. Sometimes, with some ingenuity and good marketing, these byproducts are turned into a covetable ingredient in of themselves. Cauliflower rice, which has gained popularity in the last decade as a low-carb substitute for rice, can be made using the stalks of the cauliflower as well as the florets; broccoli slaw, similarly, was conceived as a way to use up everything besides the plants’ crowns.
This time of year, we’re loaded up with carrot tops. The frilly greens, full of nutrients, make up about 40% of the plant’s total weight, but are typically discarded. It takes some coaxing to make them delicious, admittedly - eaten raw, they are bitter and have a scratchy fuzzy texture that isn’t particularly pleasant. But when you’re considering almost half of the harvest by weight, it’s worth a few extra steps to figure out how to use them. With a quick internet search, a curious cook will find endless recipes for carrot top pesto, but our preferred preparation involves blending the blanched tops with coconut (milk and yogurt) which mitigates its rougher nature and makes a delicious (vegan) dressing.
For those who don’t work or live on a farm, you can help make a small dent in this pipeline of waste by seeking out ways to purchase produce that would otherwise get tossed. There are several companies that now focus specifically on gleaning and distributing aesthetically imperfect produce. Better still, seek out the “seconds” table at your favorite farmer’s market stand - most small farms will sell their seconds at a lower price (benefiting both the shopper and the farmer).
But the most important and easiest place to start is by adjusting your own expectations of what produce should look like. Get comfortable in your kitchen with utilizing as much of your produce as possible - root, stalk, and leaf. There are lots of cookbooks and websites dedicated to this approach to cooking that can steer you in the right direction; some of our favorites include: Perfectly Good Food by Margaret Li and Irene Li; Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg; Root to Leaf by Steven Satterfield; and specifically for preservation in all forms, Bar Tartine by Nicholaus Balla and Cortney Burns.
And here are two little recipes from our demo kitchen, each using the excess of what we’ve had on hand this season.