Artichoke
The unopened flower bud of a giant Mediterranean thistle, eaten by stripping leaves dipped in butter or vinaigrette and arriving at the prized tender heart.
52 vegetables containing the letter I — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are vegetables that contain the letter I anywhere in the name. Each of the 52 vegetables below opens to a full profile.
The unopened flower bud of a giant Mediterranean thistle, eaten by stripping leaves dipped in butter or vinaigrette and arriving at the prized tender heart.
A fragrant Mediterranean herb central to Italian, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisines — with dozens of varieties from sweet Genovese to lemon to holy Thai basil, each with distinct flavor profiles.
A tropical vine vegetable with intensely bitter flesh — the most bitter of all commonly eaten vegetables; used across Asia and the Caribbean for its medicinal properties and its role as a flavour counterpoint to rich, fatty dishes.
A green flowering brassica with tightly clustered florets, descended from wild Mediterranean cabbage and prized for its fiber and vitamin C.
A pale, dense flower-bud cluster of the same species as broccoli, marketed in recent years as a low-carb stand-in for grains and starches.
An ugly knobby celery root with creamy off-white flesh — a hidden European winter staple, eaten roasted, mashed, or grated raw into the French classic *céleri rémoulade*.
The world's most widely eaten pulse — a round, beige legume cultivated for 10,000 years; the foundation of hummus, dal, chana masala, falafel, and dozens of dishes across the Middle East, Mediterranean, and South Asia.
Slim hollow grass-like onion relatives — the mildest member of the *Allium* family, used as fresh herb garnish for soups, eggs, baked potatoes, and countless other dishes.
A polarizing fresh herb that's central to Mexican, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Middle Eastern cuisines — and tastes like soap to people with specific olfactory genetics.
A long white winter radish, mildly peppery and crisp, central to East and South Asian cooking — eaten raw, pickled, simmered, and grated as a digestive aid.
A common lawn weed worldwide that's also a respected leaf vegetable — bitter spring greens used from Italian cucina povera to Korean kimchi to American foragers' first wild green of the year.
A common ornamental garden flower whose unopened buds and just-opened flowers are a Chinese vegetable — used dried in stir-fries, fresh in salads, and as a thickener in hot-and-sour soup.
A small, oblong, cream-and-green-striped winter squash with thin edible skin and rich sweet flesh — a 1990s revival of a forgotten 1894 American heirloom that's become a fall farmers'-market favorite.
A feathery aromatic herb that defines Scandinavian, Eastern European, and Eastern Mediterranean cuisine — fresh leaves on cured fish, dried seeds in pickles and breads, and the foundation of Russian and Greek summer cooking.
A purple-podded climbing bean (also called hyacinth bean or lablab) used across South Asian, African, and Caribbean cuisines — both fresh pods and dried beans, with edible flowers and ornamental status as a garden showpiece.
The long pod of the moringa tree (also called moringa pods) — eaten across South Asian and African cuisines as a vegetable, while the leaves of the same tree are a renowned superfood.
A chicory-family vegetable with crisp, pale, tightly packed leaves and a pleasant bitterness — Belgian endive is grown in darkness to blanch it white; curly endive (frisée) is the salad green with frilled, pale yellow-green leaves.
A pungent bulbous member of the allium family, used worldwide for its sharp aromatic warmth, and one of humanity's oldest cultivated medicinal foods.
A pungent, peppery rhizome from a tropical Asian plant — used fresh, dried, candied, or pickled in nearly every cuisine, with strong digestive and anti-nausea uses in folk and modern medicine.
A sharp, eye-watering root in the brassica family — the active ingredient in prepared horseradish and wasabi-style condiments, with chemistry similar to mustard.
A tightly headed crisphead lettuce with cool, watery, mild leaves — the wedge-salad workhorse, the burger-topping standard, and the most-shipped lettuce in the U.S.
A knobby, nutty tuber unrelated to artichokes and not from Jerusalem — a North American sunflower relative producing crisp, sweet roots eaten roasted, raw, or in soup.
A round, brown-skinned tuber with crisp, juicy white flesh, mildly sweet and starchy — eaten raw with chili-lime or chopped into salads, a Mexican market staple.
A swollen-stem cabbage relative — a bulb of crisp white-green flesh that tastes like a sweeter, milder broccoli stem, eaten raw or cooked across Northern European, Indian, and Vietnamese cuisines.
One of humanity's oldest cultivated plants — small lens-shaped legume seeds that cook quickly without soaking, providing exceptional plant protein; the foundation of Indian dal, French lentilles du Puy, and Middle Eastern mujaddara.
A vigorously spreading herb family that flavors everything from Moroccan tea to British roast lamb to Vietnamese spring rolls — with hundreds of varieties of distinctive cooling intensity.
A pungent edible bulb that forms the aromatic foundation of cuisines worldwide, with hundreds of varieties from sweet to sulfurous.
A pale, sweet, carrot-relative root with a complex herbal flavor — improves dramatically after frost, central to British and Eastern European winter cooking, and unfairly overshadowed by carrots.
An aromatic herb-leaf with a complex, distinctive flavour somewhere between basil, mint, and anise — red and green varieties are central to Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian cuisines; the green variety (*shiso*) wraps sashimi and flavours rice; the red variety colours pickled plums and sesame oil in Japanese cooking.
A large orange winter squash native to the Americas, with sweet starchy flesh used in soups, pies, and seasonal lattes — and its seeds eaten as a snack.
A South American seed crop of an Andean plant related to spinach and beets — a complete protein eaten as a grain-substitute, sacred to the Incas, now globally popular.
A bitter Italian red-leafed chicory eaten in salads, grilled, or roasted — northern Italy's prized winter vegetable, with several distinctive regional varieties protected under European DOP designation.
A small, crisp, peppery root vegetable in the brassica family, eaten raw with salt and butter, sliced into salads, or roasted to mellow its bite.
A bitter Italian leafy green with small broccoli-like florets (also called broccoli rabe) — a defining ingredient of southern Italian cuisine, Italian-American sausage sandwiches, and Mediterranean winter cooking.
A small olive-green Indian Himalayan bean — once a major food crop in the Eastern Himalayas, now a "lost crop" being revived for its drought-resilience and unique nutritional profile.
The "oyster plant" — a long, white-rooted or black-skinned root vegetable that tastes faintly of oysters when cooked; popular in Victorian Britain and 19th-century European cooking, it declined into obscurity in the 20th century but is now experiencing a revival among chefs interested in forgotten vegetables.
A distinctive sea vegetable with an intense salty, maritime flavour — marsh samphire (glasswort) is a bright green succulent harvested from tidal mudflats in summer, blanched briefly and served with butter and fish; rock samphire has a more pungent, aromatic taste and grows on coastal cliffs.
Young onions harvested before bulb formation — also called green onions or spring onions, used worldwide as both garnish and primary ingredient, especially in East Asian cooking.
A leafy green native to ancient Persia, eaten raw or cooked, especially rich in iron, folate, and vitamin K.
The traditional British winter brassica — purple or white sprouting broccoli produces a mass of small, tender florets on long stems throughout late winter and early spring, bridging the hungry gap between root vegetables and summer crops; unlike head broccoli, it is harvested by picking individual spears, which encourages further production; the purple variety is sweeter and more tender than supermarket broccoli.
An Andean lupin bean with extraordinarily high protein content (over 40%) — a traditional Peruvian and Bolivian staple that requires extensive water-soaking to remove bitter alkaloids before eating.
A small Asian green with dark spoon-shaped leaves arranged in a flat rosette — a cousin of bok choy, eaten in salads, stir-fries, and increasingly in Western salad mixes for its distinctive shape and mild mustard flavor.
A wrinkled brown tuber (not actually a nut) eaten as a snack across Africa and the Mediterranean — and the foundation of Spain's beloved horchata de chufa, dating back to Moorish-era Valencia.
A small green papery-husked Mexican fruit-vegetable that's the foundation of salsa verde, mole verde, and the green chile cuisine of central Mexico — tart, citrus-like, distinctly different from a tomato despite the name.
A perennial onion variety (also called walking onion or topset onion) that produces small bulbs at the top of its flower stalks — drooping under their own weight to plant new bulbs nearby, "walking" across the garden.
A bright orange-yellow rhizome from a tropical Asian plant — fundamental to South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine, the source of curry's golden color, and the focus of an enormous global "anti-inflammatory" supplement industry.
A peppery, white-and-purple root vegetable common in Northern European cooking — predating potatoes as a staple, with leaves (turnip greens) eaten as a separate vegetable across the American South.
A sweet onion grown only in 20 designated counties of southeast Georgia — its mildness and low sulfur produced by the local soil's unique low-sulfur chemistry.
Japan's fiery green condiment — not a chilli heat but a sharp, volatile, nasal-clearing pungency from isothiocyanates that hits instantly and dissipates quickly; true wasabi is the grated rhizome of a semi-aquatic Japanese plant; the green paste served in most Western sushi restaurants is imitation wasabi made from horseradish, mustard, and food colouring.
The woodland carpet of spring — wild garlic (*ramsons*) carpets British and European deciduous woodland floors from March to May, filling the air with garlic scent before the tree canopy closes; every part is edible, from the leaves and stems to the white star-shaped flowers; it is the most aromatic of Britain's edible wild plants and is now widely foraged for restaurant kitchens.
The Chinese name for watermelon (西瓜, "western melon"), often listed under X for letter-game purposes — a refreshing cucurbit treated as a vegetable in some Chinese cooking applications.
A summer squash with thin green skin and tender white flesh, harvested young; mild-flavored and absorbent of whatever it's cooked with.
Try vegetables that start with I, or end with I. Or browse the full vegetables index.