Dried Aster Scaber

One of my favourite perennial vegetables and a fantastic edimental is Aster scaber (nowadays Doellengeria scabra), here harvested in spring in my garden:

Harvested Aster scaber shoots in my garden

In September, in a farmer’s market in Atlanta, Georgia I found packets of dried Aster scaber leaves (I had searched unsuccessfully for chwinamul in other Korean supermarkets, but hadn’t found it before):

Packet of dried Aster scaber

On the front of the packet is a WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm!

WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm!

On the other hand, on the back of the packet it says: “Keep your health with benefits of HAETAE Sangol Hyanggi Namuls”

On the back of the packet: “Keep your health with benefits of Haetae “Sangol Hyanggi” Namuls

Is the reason for the cancer warning on the packet due to the fact that the same packet is used for a range of dried vegetables and shiitake mushrooms (namul), including bracken fern which contains a carcinogen, ptaquiloside (however, it is both water-soluble and is destroyed by heat )

Is the reason for the cancer warning on the packet due to the fact that the packet is used for a range of dried vegetables and shiitake mushrooms (namul), including bracken fern which contains a carcinogen, ptaquiloside which is both water-soluble and is destroyed by heat.

I was also surprised to read what would seem to be the excessive pre-preparation by boiling for 20 mins., followed by a soak overnight and then rinsing 7 times, to remove the bitterness.  I’ve never detected bitterness and have understood it’s also used in salads. I wonder also why they are known as “thumbs”?

I was also surprised by the pre-preparation by boiling for 20 mins., followed by a soak overnight and then rinsing 7 times, to remove the bitterness.

3 thoughts on “Dried Aster Scaber”

  1. Hello Stephan,
    we’re a hardy-plants nursery from Austria and we’re looking for seeds of Aster scaber.
    Unfortunatly we don’t get any from Korea becouse of Covid 19 they don’t ship to Europe.
    Do you know if there is any other possibility to get some?

    Kind regards
    Karin Schmidhammer
    Hameter GmbH

    1. You could try Incredible Vegetables in Devon; they sell seed but not sure if they post to mainland Europe. They are on Instagram and have a whole range of edible perennial plants and seeds.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *