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

The butcher’s broom is a shrub that grows in hills and mountains, wild like the hop shoots I often talk about.

So if you also love phytoalimurgy and foraging, this is the season to go searching for butcher’s broom sprouts, bruschi or rusli as you like to call them.

Compared to wild asparagus or hop shoots, butcher’s broom sprouts are slightly more bitter, but you can create beneficial recipes, like a nice cecina if not the classic omelette. Or even a risotto for example, a pesto or even preserved in oil so many ideas to put wild sprouts on the plate.

The butcher’s broom is very rich in flavonoids that fight free radicals, and they do not get lost in cooking.

Pliny even mentioned butcher’s broom, saying that its decoction was used for kidney infections, but butcher’s broom is also known to prevent kidney stones, arthritis, and rheumatism.

Be careful not to over-harvest in the woods, these are protected plants, only gather the bunch you want to use to taste them.

As stated on the forest service page:

 Allowed one kilogram per person: We remind you of hop shoots (urtissoni or bruscandoli), wild asparagus (‘sparso), bear garlic, butcher’s broom, tamaro.

Here I presented my butcher’s broom sprouts with a simple orange hummus.

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See you soon

Daniela

I leave you with a recipe with butcher’s broom sprouts or other sprouts