Broccoli is a notoriously healthy veggie in its own right, and as a member of the Brassica veggie household, it is even thought about a superfood by numerous. Nevertheless, did you understand that you can make broccoli even healthier with the addition of simply one scrumptious ingredient?.

I first discovered this idea earlier this year during my plant biology class at UC Berkeley, and now it informs how I prepare my greens. Among our lessons concentrated on cooking, and how the process of cooking, whether by temperature, modifying the pH, or salinity, alters the nutritional makeup of fruits and vegetables. And while I knew that cooking clearly changes the taste of a vegetable, I learned that in the case of Brassica vegetables– kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and collard greens– cooking can in fact cause the loss of health substances that may help secure you from numerous illness and conditions.

Fortunately, I also found out an interesting suggestion about how you can add some of these compounds back into your prepared broccoli and other veggies. All you need to do is add ground mustard seed to your broccoli when you’ve completed cooking it.

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According to Dr. Patrick Shih, an assistant teacher at UC Berkeley, the reason broccoli regains many of its natural nutrients when it’s prepared with ground mustard seed is all thanks to an enzyme called myrosinase, which is naturally discovered in broccoli however breaks down as soon as the vegetable is prepared. “The health compounds are made when an inert molecule (such as glucosinolate, which exists in broccoli) is put in contact with myrosinase,” Dr. Shih discusses. “The myrosinase transforms the glucosinolates into a big diversity of substances, a number of which have associated health-related impacts.”.

Dr. Patrick Shih is an assistant professor at UC Berkeley in the department of plant and microbial biology. His laboratory focuses on engineering plants.

Why Mustard Seed?

So, what does ground mustard seed have to do with myrosinase and the health compounds in broccoli? Per Dr. Shih, due to ground mustard seed’s own chemical homes, the active ingredient includes back myrosinase when cooked with broccoli, hence bring back many of the veggies’ promoted dietary benefits.

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” Mustard seeds, many times, are dehydrated at a low enough temperature that doesn’t denature the myrosinase. Consider ground mustard seed as a type of suspended animation,” he explains. “When we add water to it, it can get up with effectively working myrosinases. If we add mustard seeds to a Brassica vegetable, something like broccoli or broccoli sprouts, we will be able to provide it an extra dose of myrosinases to make sure that we have a higher conversion to the health compounds.” Plus, it tastes pretty good too..

To put it simply, adding ground mustard seed to broccoli just after it has actually ended up cooking restores the myrosinase that is naturally lost during the cooking procedure, thus making broccoli that’s prepared with ground mustard seed healthier than your standard plate of the prepared veggie.

How to Add Mustard Seed to Broccoli.

Now that you know how and why ground mustard seed offers prepared broccoli a nutrient boost, you may want to prepare your broccoli with ground mustard seed going forward. Thankfully, it’s extremely easy to do, and does not include any cooking time to the end product.

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As soon as your broccoli is cooked– be it roasted, sauteed, steamed, and even grilled– merely toss the completed product with a teaspoon of ground mustard seed to reactivate the myrosinase and fully bring back those broccoli health benefits. So long as the ground mustard seed is present, you can also cook your broccoli with salt, olive oil, and garlic, and anything else that might make it even tastier.