Rainbow Chard in album produce

In Albums: food produce

Jul 9th, 2011, by Alex Zorach

These bundles of rainbow chard were for sale at Urban Girls Produce at Clark Park Farmer's Market in West Philadelphia. Rainbow chard is a name for combined Swiss chard of different varieties.

Chard is a vegetable that is from the same species as beets, Beta vulgaris; whereas beets have been cultivated for the root, chard has been cultivated for the leaf and stem.

I love chard and I think it is one of the most under-appreciated and under-utilized vegetables. I also think that rainbow chard is often under-appreciated, as it is typically used for color and not flavor, and its different varieties are usually lumped in together rather than used distinctly.

One thing that is quite astonishing about rainbow chard is how different each of the different colors taste. I find that the difference in flavor between the different colors of rainbow chard are greater than the differences in flavor between different types of cabbage-family plants such as cabbage, collard greens, or bok choy.

• The white (green and white) chard I find to have the freshest flavor, clean, and most similar to other cooked greens.
• The deep purple chard has a flavor which I find to be very similar to beets.
• The yellow chard I find to have a very warming quality, and is mild but somehow pervasive. It imparts a richness to anything it is added to, and although it doesn't have a particularly sharp or strong flavor, I find it a bit overwhelming on its own. I particularly like adding yellow chard to soups.
• I have not experienced the red-orange chard enough to characterize its flavor.

There are not only four colors or varieties of chard; it comes in many different gradations, including many forms intermediate between the colors described here.