Sunflowers
The sunflowers are a group of plants in the genus Helianthus. The genus is one of many in the massive daisy family, Asteraceae. Sunflowers are native to North America, with most of the species concentrated east of the Rocky Mountains.
Two species of sunflower stand out as the most important for culinary purposes. These are the common sunflower, grown for seeds and oil, and the sunchoke, cultivated for its large tubers. The common sunflower is native to the Pacific Northwest, occurring primarily east of the Cascade Mountains in the Inland Northwest. There are a few other native species in the region (Helianthus bolanderi, Helianthus nuttallii, and Helianthus cusickii), but these do not have culinary value.
Species
Sunflowers
Common sunflower (Helianthus annuus)
Sunchokes
Sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus)
Common sunflowers
The common sunflower, Helianthus annuus, is thought to be native to the western United States and the Great Plains (into Canada). From there, Native Americans and European colonists expanded its range eastward. The wild form of the plant is still commonly found in its western range.
Sunflowers were domesticated in North America for use as a food crop starting 4,000 years ago. Wild sunflowers are heavily branched and have numerous smaller flower heads. The domesticated varieties were bred with a single large stem and flower head, and sizable seeds.
Spanish colonists brought the sunflower to Europe in the early 1500s. For the next two hundred years, they only found use in Europe as ornamentals. Seed production for oil didn’t take off until sunflowers reached Russia, where the plant was soon bred into specific varieties for edible seed and oilseed production. Today, Ukraine and Russia are the two top producers of sunflower oil in the world, accounting for over 60% of total production. In the United States, production is centered around the Great Plains, mainly the Dakotas. Production in the Inland Northwest is present but small. A warm-season annual, seeds are ready to harvest from late summer to mid-fall in the Inland Northwest.
Oilseed sunflower seeds are generally smaller, with black hulls, and a higher oil content. Those eaten as seeds are come from varieties with striped hulls and a lower oil content. These are called confectionery sunflower seeds.
In addition to oil, sunflower seeds are processed into sunflower butter (similar to peanut butter) or sunflower halva, a confection popular in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Like other seed oils, sunflower oil is often refined, deodorized, or winterized to increase the shelf life and smoke point of the oil. I’m personally not a fan of refined oils. Unrefined sunflower oil has a lower smoke point, but a great flavor.
Sunchokes
Sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus) are grown for their large tubers that look like ginger root. This root vegetable is also known as a “Jerusalem artichoke”. The moniker is thought to have come from a substitution of the Italian name “girasole articiocco”. The name “sunchoke”, on the other hand, was invented in the 1960s as a marketing name. I usually don’t like marketing names, but I think it fits the plant very well - it’s a sunflower and it does have a flavor profile somewhat reminiscent of artichokes.
Sunchokes are considered by many to be a garden bully and difficult to remove once introduced into a garden. There are even people who claim the plant is invasive in its native range, where it spreads easily thanks to summer rains. Here in the Pacific Northwest, it is a little better behaved, but still very well-adapted to cultivation, achieving high yields with little effort or irrigation.
The plant, a perennial, is native to central North America. Prior to European contact, it was already in cultivation by indigenous people, who introduced it both east and west of its original range. Sunchokes were brought to Europe in the early 1600s, where it was quickly adopted throughout the continent. They eventually escaped from cultivation have naturalized widely.
In the US, sunchokes were commonly eaten during the colonial era, but eventually fell out of favor and only more recently regained some popularity here.
Cooking with sunchokes
Sunchokes are ready to harvest in mid to late fall and benefit from. Kept in a moist, cool environment, the tubers can last for up to five months. They can also be overwintered underground in most climates though in commercial production, they are dug up before winter. Many sources claim they taste better after a frost, and there may be the added benefit of reducing inulin content in the tubers (see section below).
The tubers can be eaten raw, in which case they are crisp and crunchy. They can also be cooked like other root vegetables. There is variability in the shape of the tubers. Some varieties are knobbier. Others are more elongated and smooth, and easier to peel. The peels are perfectly edible, but it’s a good idea to remove them if you’re making something like a purée or soup, in which case the peels will discolor the final product.
Making use of its high sugar content, a number of distilleries in the region surrounding Stuttgart, Germany, produce a liquor called “rossler” from sunchokes ("topinambur” in German). They are also pressed to make inulin syrup.
Inulin
Sunchoke tubers are high in a type of sugar called inulin, also found in chicory and camas bulbs. Enzymes in the human gut do not easily break down this sugar, which passes to the lower intestinal tract and is metabolised by bacteria, causing gas in many people.
There are several strategies cited to avoid this unpleasant side effect, but I wouldn’t be able to say with absolute certainty if they’re valid.
The first is via long-term exposure: that the gut flora adapts to digest inulin better with a steadier diet of the tubers.
Another approach and one that has numerous scientific studies to back it up, is to only harvest the tubers late in the season or to place them in cold storage for about one to two months. Cold storage causes the tubers to convert the inulin into other sugars, thereby reducing the source of flatulence.
Other possible species
Two other species, the Maximillian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani) from the Great Plains and the giant sunflower (Helianthus giganteus) from eastern North America, reputedly have edible (but smaller) tubers that can be eaten. Information is very limited, but these two species might merit further investigation.
