[Sca-cooks] Barberries

Sharon Palmer ranvaig at columbus.rr.com
Thu Nov 12 21:13:48 PST 2009


>
>    The barberries I have tried tasted somewhat meally and not that 
>good.  For the pain of gathering them (stickers) rose hips or even 
>hawthornes would taste much, much better and be less damaging to the 
>hands.

There are a lot of types of barberry, apparently the one used as a 
spice is Berberis vulgaris.
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/spice_geo.html#Berberis_vulgaris

When I was a child, my grandfather had barberry bushes around his 
house, and we were told not to eat them because they were poisonous. 
Research on the net says that there are many varieties of barberry 
and some are poisonous.  I suspect we ate some in spite of the 
warnings, and no one died, but it would be good to be cautious and be 
sure you are tasting the correct type of barberry.

http://www.chow.com/ingredients/272

Sharon



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