Frilly Chinese mustard greens

These Chinese mustard greens have been an unexpected & kinda delightful favourite of the box. They have a beautiful salty flavour all on their own. Both raw & steamed, they are lovely.

This flavourful mustard variety is called Ruby Streaks. Its a famous and common open pollinated variety, and the folks at Kitazawa Seed, who specialise in Asian seed, describe it as an heirloom. There are multiple published studies looking into the anthocyanin make up of Ruby Streaks, and they are really interesting! One of them I found was an experiment of Ruby Streaks growing under different levels of light, the changes in the light produced different distributions of the anthocyanin compounds in the leaves. Some plants grew to look more pink, others were close to blue. These purple compounds will turn your Hot Pot purple, and are super good for all of us to eat and enjoy.

Ruby Streaks is classified as a brassica juncea, the same species as most Indian mustard plants, including the mustards grown for their seed and oil. Although Ruby Streaks has a laced shape just like Mizuna, Mizuna is a different species, its a brassica rapa.

Dylan and I are eagerly awaiting a seed order from Kitazawa Seeds, thats in the post now from the US. We’ve ordered almost every single mustard variety we could, that isnt brassica rapa, as brassica rapa has lots of restrictions and requires expensive seed treatments when entering into Australia.

So we have many fabulous tasty brassica juncea mustards to look forward to, and they’ll join Ruby Streaks.