How to Eat an Artichoke | In the Kitchen

Today, instead of showing you how to cook something, I'm going to show you how to eat it. I'm going to eat an artichoke. You might think this is kind of simple, but it's actually— unless you've done it before, it's actually kind of complex. And I love this because this is what my dad showed me how to eat when I was really little, and he and I always loved our artichokes. So This is kind of a father-daughter thing. So you have your artichoke, which you've already cooked. Very easy to do. You actually literally just boil it for about, depending on the size of the artichoke, anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour so that it gets nice and soft. So we have already done that. We have a great little recipe for it in the cookbook. So when you go to eat an artichoke, you don't want to just cut into it and eat the whole thing because there's all these little spiky bits on the ends of each of the petals or the leaves. What you want to do is you want to peel each leaf off starting at the bottom, and the part you want to eat is just this little bottom part, and it's only on the inside. So you actually just want to take your teeth and scrape it. Okay? I like to actually dip it into a little bowl of melted butter and lemon juice, but you can dip it into homemade salad dressing or some mayo or Any different things, but nice little dip and then like that. It looks like a lot of work for only a little bit of food, and it kind of is, but it's so tasty, it's worth it. So we're going to fast forward now while I motor through all of the rest of the outside leaves. When you get to a certain point like I just have, the leaves get super thin, you could just actually eat the whole bottom of the leaf. So instead of going leaf by leaf, what you can do at this point, you can see they all look a little different, looking a little bit more like the artichoke you would get if you got, you know, in a can or at the deli counter at your local store. So now you can actually kind of pinch the artichoke and pull off that top. Okay? So what I like to do from here is just kind of pinch it and make it flat because there's still all that good meat in there. Dip it in a little bit of the butter. Mmm. And eat that part. So yummy. Now you don't want to eat all the way down to the end, but just kind of that chunky fleshy part. Mmm. So yummy! Now, you can still eat most of the stem, but this little thing in here is actually the choke, and all these little itty-bitty ends, you don't want to eat those parts. So you just take a little knife and you just go gently around it, and it's kind of— I don't know if you can see that, but these little bits, they just, they'll come off really easily if you've cooked it enough. So you've got the inside, and then you've got your little choke that just comes off super easily. And now you can just eat this, you know, chop it up, throw it in that butter. Mmm. And you can eat the whole stem.