48 vegetables containing the letter N — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are vegetables that contain the letter N anywhere in the name. Each of the 48 vegetables below opens to a full profile.
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.
Ancient beans from the Mediterranean and Middle East — large, flat, pale green beans in thick pods; eaten fresh in spring as a delicacy; dried as dried fava beans, the basis of ful medames, bissara, and dozens of traditional dishes.
A winter squash with smooth tan skin and dense, sweet orange flesh — one of the most versatile and widely eaten squash varieties; roasts to a caramelised sweetness and blends to a silky soup.
An edible canna lily — the same showy garden flower whose underground rhizomes were a major Andean food crop, still grown in South America and Asia for starch production.
A wild ancestor of the artichoke — its fleshy leaf stalks are eaten like celery, central to Italian and Spanish winter cuisine, while the artichoke we know is bred from the same species' flower buds.
Black Tuscan kale — the darkest, most robustly flavoured of all kale varieties, with long, deeply crinkled, almost black-green leaves that become sweeter after the first frost; the essential leaf in ribollita and other Tuscan winter soups; more tender and less bitter than curly kale, it is now a staple of artisan cuisine worldwide.
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.
Large, flat, dark green brassica leaves with a mild-bitter flavour — slow-braised for hours in the American South with smoked pork until silky; also eaten across Africa, Brazil, and Portugal.
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 glossy purple nightshade fruit treated culinarily as a vegetable, central to cuisines from the Mediterranean to South and East Asia.
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 bulb-and-frond vegetable with a delicate anise flavor — eaten raw in salads, roasted whole, or braised with citrus, and producing seeds used as a fragrant spice.
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.
The immature pod of common bean — harvested before the seeds inside develop, eaten whole as a crisp, mild vegetable; one of the most widely grown and versatile vegetables in the world.
Mexico's most recognised chilli pepper — a medium-heat, thick-walled green or red chile with a bright, vegetal flavour, grown in Jalapa, Veracruz, and eaten fresh, pickled, smoked (chipotle), or as nacho topping worldwide.
A long, slim, deep-purple eggplant with thinner skin and creamier flesh than the globe eggplant — the standard in East Asian cooking, ideal for quick stir-fries and miso preparations.
A tropical grass with an intensely citrus-lemony fragrance from its stalks — essential in Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Malaysian cooking; the bottom white section is finely sliced or pounded into pastes, while the whole stalk is used to infuse soups and curries.
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 small green legume native to South Asia — dried mung beans cook quickly and are used in dals and porridges; sprouted they become bean sprouts; split yellow they make the silkiest dal; whole in Ayurvedic cooking they are considered the most easily digestible pulse.
The sting that becomes a virtue in the pot — stinging nettles are one of Britain's most nutritious wild vegetables, with young spring tips packed with iron, vitamin C, and protein; blanching removes the sting completely and leaves a deep green, earthy leaf used in soups, risotto, pasta, tea, and beer.
The flat, paddle-shaped pad of the prickly pear cactus — eaten across Mexico as a vegetable, slicing into salads, stews, and grilled tacos with a slightly tart green flavor.
A pungent edible bulb that forms the aromatic foundation of cuisines worldwide, with hundreds of varieties from sweet to sulfurous.
A pungent Mediterranean herb essential to Italian, Greek, and Mexican cooking — closely related to marjoram but more assertive, with the dried form actually more intense than fresh.
Small, thin-skinned Spanish peppers from Galicia that are blistered whole in olive oil and served with sea salt — mild and grassy in flavour, but with one famous quirk — roughly one in ten is unexpectedly hot; a classic Spanish tapas dish requiring almost no preparation.
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.
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 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 mathematically perfect vegetable — romanesco broccoli (or Roman cauliflower) forms a head of tightly packed, spiralling chartreuse-green florets that arrange themselves in a precise Fibonacci spiral; each smaller cone is a perfect miniature of the whole, making the vegetable a textbook example of a natural fractal; milder and nuttier in flavour than broccoli or cauliflower, it has become a favourite of chefs for its visual impact.
A long-podded climbing bean from the Mexican highlands — grown across British and Eastern European gardens for its prolific harvest, eaten as fresh long pods rather than dried beans.
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 cross between the garden pea and mangetout — the entire crisp, sweet pod is eaten whole, including the small, developed peas inside; one of the sweetest raw vegetables and a favourite for snacking and stir-frying.
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.
A grain crop bred for high-sugar kernels eaten as a vegetable — derived from teosinte over 9,000 years ago in Mexico, now the staple summer barbecue side dish across the Americas.
A small ancient bean cultivated by indigenous peoples of the Sonoran Desert for over 5,000 years — extreme drought-tolerance, distinctive flavor, and a major comeback in Native American food sovereignty movements.
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 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 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 small black-skinned cream-fleshed lentil (also called black gram) — the foundation of South Indian cuisine, the protein in dosa and idli batters, and the dal in dal makhani.
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.
An aquatic vegetable grown in muddy ponds — a small, round corm with crisp, white flesh that retains its crunch even after cooking; a key ingredient in Chinese stir-fries, dumpling fillings, and Southeast Asian desserts.
A heat-tolerant pod bean reaching 30-50 cm long — beloved across Chinese, Thai, Filipino, and Indian cuisines, eaten quick-cooked rather than long-stewed for its distinctive crunch.
A golden-fleshed Canadian hybrid potato variety renowned for its buttery flavor and creamy texture that needs little enrichment — a cook's favorite for mashing, roasting, and potato salads.
A summer squash with thin green skin and tender white flesh, harvested young; mild-flavored and absorbent of whatever it's cooked with.
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