"Silverbeet" redirects here. For the album by The Bats, see Silverbeet (album)

Silverbeet (album)

-Track listing:#"Courage"#"Sighting the Sound"#"Too Much"#"Slow Alight"#"Valley Floor"#"Love Floats Two"#"Green"#"No Time For Your Kind"#"Straight on Home"#"Before the Day"#"Stay Away"#"Drive Me Some Boars"#"Halfway to Nowhere"...

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Chard (Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla), is a leafy green vegetable

Vegetable

The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....

 often used in Mediterranean cooking. While the leaves are always green, chard stalks vary in color. Chard has been bred to have highly nutrious leaves at the expense of the root (which is not as nutrious as the leaves). Chard is, in fact, considered to be one of the healthiest vegetables available and a valuable addition to a healthy diet (not unlike other green leafy vegetables). http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=16 World's Healthiest Foods, George Mateljan Foundation, 17 November 2011 World's Healthiest Foods  Chard has been around for centuries, however because of its similarity to beets is difficult to determine the exact evolution of the different varieties of chard http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/topic_id/6/id/36/ 17 November 2011 Clifford A. Wright 

Classification

Chard and the other beets are chenopods

Chenopodioideae

The Chenopodioideae is a subfamily of the flowering plant family Amaranthaceae, formerly classified in family Chenopodiaceae.Food species include several Chenopodium species , Orache , and Spinach .-Genera:The subfamily includes about 25 genera.* Tribus Atripliceae C. A...

, a group which is either its own family Chenopodiaceae

Chenopodiaceae

Chenopodiaceae were a family of flowering plants, also called the Goosefoot Family. They are now included within family Amaranthaceae. The vast majority of Chenopods are weeds, and many are salt and drought tolerant. A few food crops also belong to the family: spinach, beets, chard, quinoa, and...

 or a subfamily within the Amaranthaceae

Amaranthaceae

The flowering plant family Amaranthaceae, the Amaranth family, contains about 176 genera and 2,400 species.- Description :Most of these species are herbs or subshrubs; very few are trees or climbers. Some species are succulent....

. Although the leaves are eaten, it is in the same group and subfamily as beetroot

Beetroot

The beetroot, also known as the table beet, garden beet, red beet or informally simply as beet, is one of the many cultivated varieties of beets and arguably the most commonly encountered variety in North America, Central America and Britain.-Consumption:The usually deep-red roots of beetroot are...

 (garden beet), which is usually grown primarily for its edible roots. Chard is also known by its many common name

Common name

A common name of a taxon or organism is a name in general use within a community; it is often contrasted with the scientific name for the same organism...

s such as Swiss chard, silverbeet, perpetual spinach, spinach beet, crab beet, bright lights (due to the bright and vivid spring colors when they are cooked or provided as a medley of vegetables), seakale beet, and mangold and is one of the cultivated descendants of the sea beet

Sea beet

The sea beet, Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima , is a member of the family Chenopodiaceae. Carl Linnaeus first described Beta vulgaris in 1753; in the second edition of Species Plantarum in 1762 he divided the species into wild and cultivated varieties, giving the name Beta maritima to the wide...

, Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima.

Etymology

The word "Swiss" was used to distinguish chard from French spinach

Spinach

Spinach is an edible flowering plant in the family of Amaranthaceae. It is native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant , which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions...

 varieties by 19th century seed catalog publishers. The chard is very popular among Mediterranean cooks. The first varieties have been traced back to Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

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Growth and harvesting

Chard can be harvested while the leaves are young and tender, or after maturity, when they are larger and have slightly tougher stems. Raw chard is extremely perishable.

Cultivars

Cultivar

Cultivar

A cultivar'Cultivar has two meanings as explained under Formal definition. When used in reference to a taxon, the word does not apply to an individual plant but to all those plants sharing the unique characteristics that define the cultivar. is a plant or group of plants selected for desirable...

s of chard include green forms, such as 'Lucullus' and 'Fordhook Giant', as well as red-ribbed forms such as 'Ruby Chard' and 'Rhubarb Chard'. The red-ribbed forms are very attractive in the garden, but as a rough general rule, the older green forms will tend to out-produce the colorful hybrids. 'Rainbow Chard' is a mix of other colored varieties that is often mistaken for a variety unto itself.

Chard has shiny, green, ribbed leaves, with stems that range from white to yellow to red, depending on the cultivar.

Culinary Use

Chard has a slightly bitter taste and is used in a variety of cultures around the world, including Arab cuisine

Arab cuisine

Arab cuisine is defined as the various regional cuisines spanning the Arab World, from Morocco and Tunisia to Saudi Arabia, and incorporating Levantine, Egyptian .-History:...

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Fresh young chard can be used raw in salad

Salad

Salad is any of a wide variety of dishes, including vegetable salads; salads of pasta, legumes, eggs, or grains; mixed salads incorporating meat, poultry, or seafood; and fruit salads. They may include a mixture of cold and hot, often including raw vegetables or fruits.Green salads include leaf...

s. Mature chard leaves and stalks are typically cooked (like in pizzoccheri

Pizzoccheri

Pizzoccheri are a type of short tagliatelle, a flat ribbon pasta, made with 80% buckwheat flour and 20% wheat flour. When classically prepared in Valtellina or in Graubünden, they are cooked along with greens , and cubed potatoes...

) or sauteed

Sautéing

Sautéing is a method of cooking food, that uses a small amount of fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Ingredients are usually cut into pieces or thinly sliced to facilitate fast cooking. The primary mode of heat transfer during sautéing is conduction between the pan and the food being...

; their bitterness fades with cooking, leaving a refined flavor which is more delicate than that of cooked spinach

Spinach

Spinach is an edible flowering plant in the family of Amaranthaceae. It is native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant , which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions...

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Nutritional content

Swiss chard is high in vitamins A

Vitamin A

Vitamin A is a vitamin that is needed by the retina of the eye in the form of a specific metabolite, the light-absorbing molecule retinal, that is necessary for both low-light and color vision...

, K

Vitamin K

Vitamin K is a group of structurally similar, fat soluble vitamins that are needed for the posttranslational modification of certain proteins required for blood coagulation and in metabolic pathways in bone and other tissue. They are 2-methyl-1,4-naphthoquinone derivatives...

 and C

Vitamin C

Vitamin C or L-ascorbic acid or L-ascorbate is an essential nutrient for humans and certain other animal species. In living organisms ascorbate acts as an antioxidant by protecting the body against oxidative stress...

, with a 175 g

Gram

The gram is a metric system unit of mass....

 serving containing 214%, 716%, and 53%, respectively, of the recommended daily value. It is also rich in minerals, dietary fiber and protein.

All parts of the chard plant contain oxalic acid

Oxalic acid

Oxalic acid is an organic compound with the formula H2C2O4. This colourless solid is a dicarboxylic acid. In terms of acid strength, it is about 3,000 times stronger than acetic acid. Oxalic acid is a reducing agent and its conjugate base, known as oxalate , is a chelating agent for metal cations...

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