Mulberry Leaf Vegetable

I love mulberries. They are an amazing fruit that you usually can’t buy from the markets as they don't store and are just too delicate to transport long distances. The trees are quick and easy to grow, high yielding, look nice, provide good shade, are long lived, and the leaves/branches are excellent animal fodder. White mulberries are also one of the few fruit trees that can grow from a tiny cutting and fruit the following year.

Mulberry leaves are said to be very rich in magnesium, potassium, zinc, calcium, and are really high in iron. They are meant to be a rich source of several vitamins, phenolics, and antioxidants. According to the FAO, mulberry leaf contains 15% to 28% protein, which is high for a leaf vegetable.

Considering how easy mulberry trees are to grow here, and how they really suffer no pest or disease problems in my garden, and how healthy they are meant to be, I thought I may as well give mulberry a try as a leaf vegetable.

My white mulberry back in spring

I have heard for many years that mulberry leaf can be used as a vegetable, and that mulberry leaves can be used to make tea. I have eaten raw leaves a few times and find them uninspiring. For some reason I had never tried the leaves cooked or as herbal tea before. So last spring and summer I picked some nice young leaves from my mulberry trees and my children and I gave this a try.

I used fresh young leaves and made a kind of herbal tea with them. It tasted nice enough, not bitter or horrible in any way, but nothing really outstanding. I would compare the taste to green tea, but maybe more leafy - if that makes sense. It smelled similar to green tea, kind of, there was nothing overpowering or unpleasant. Nothing really stood out to me, it was ok.

My kids thought it was ok too, none of them disliked it but none were overly enthusiastic over it. I have made this tea again a few times, I drink it but if my kids have the option they will usually go for something fruitier like pineapple sage tea. I think you can use dried leaf for tea, but we only used them fresh.

Over spring and summer I cooked some of the tender young mulberry leaves as a vegetable and shared that with the kids. Ok, maybe I didn’t really cook them. Maybe we just ate the leaves that had just been used to make our mulberry leaf tea, but the end result is the same.

Many leaf vegetables have bitter or unpleasant after tastes and sometimes leave you with a weird feeling in your mouth, mulberry leaf vegetable did not have this. It tasted nice enough, kind of leafy which was to be expected. My kids enjoyed it and asked for more, I think the novelty of eating cooked mulberry leaf made them ask for more.

No one disliked mulberry leaf as a cooked vegetable, probably because its taste was mild and not overpowering. Being mild tasting I think that it would go well in many dishes in place of other vegetables, or to compliment other vegetables, or as a side dish with a meal.

I picked these tender young leaves

I am amazed at how many different climates a mulberry tree will survive in (tropics through to temperate as long as they have enough water), and how long lived and productive they can be, yet how infrequently they are exploited by people as a food source. The berries are utterly delicious, the leaves and stems can be fed to livestock, but the leaves are really quite healthy for people appear to be completely underutilised as a cooked vegetable.

I wonder if there is some reason people don't cook and eat mulberry leaves as a vegetable more often. Perhaps it was once a famine food so people didn't eat it in better times and its potential use as a food has since been forgotten?

I think I need to find room to grow a few more mulberry trees. I love the berries and now that I know that I can use the leaf as tea or a cooked vegetable they are even more useful to have around.