If you love foraging, you surely know the bruschi, the butcher’s-broom shoots with orange hummus on the table today.

Butcher’s-broom is a shrub that grows on hills and mountains, wild like the hop shoots I often talk about.

So if you also love wild food foraging and the gathering of wild edible herbs, this is the season to search for butcher’s-broom shoots, bruschi or rusli as you like to call them.

Compared to wild asparagus or hop shoots, butcher’s-broom shoots are slightly more bitter, but you can make delicious and beneficial recipes, like a nice chickpea flatbread instead of the classic omelette. Or a risotto for example, a pesto or preserved in oil — lots of ideas to put wild shoots on the plate.

Butcher’s-broom is very rich in flavonoids that fight free radicals, and these are not lost in cooking.

Pliny already mentioned butcher’s-broom, saying that a decoction was used for kidney infections; butcher’s-broom is also known to help prevent kidney stones, arthritis and rheumatism.

Be careful not to harvest excessively in the woods — these are protected plants. Pick only the small bunch you plan to taste.

As written on the forestry service page:

Allowed one kilogram per person: In this regard we remind you the hop shoots (urtissoni or bruscandoli), wild asparagus (‘sparso), wild garlic, butcher’s-broom, tamarisk.

Here I served my butcher’s-broom shoots with a very simple orange hummus.

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See you soon

Daniela

I leave you a recipe using butcher’s-broom shoots or other shoots