34 vegetables containing the letter U — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are vegetables that contain the letter U anywhere in the name. Each of the 34 vegetables below opens to a full profile.
A peppery, slightly bitter salad leaf with a distinctive mustardy heat that intensifies as the plant ages — also called rocket in Britain and Australia; a Mediterranean staple increasingly consumed worldwide.
A spring shoot of a perennial lily relative, prized for its grassy flavor and tender tips, eaten green, white, or purple.
Tiny cabbage-like buds growing along a tall stalk — the most-divisive vegetable of the 20th century, transformed in the 21st through high-heat roasting and dramatic genetic improvement.
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.
Edible cactus pads (nopales) and stems from prickly pear and related species — a staple of Mexican cooking, eaten grilled, scrambled with eggs, or in salads.
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.
A Chinese variety of lettuce grown for its thick fleshy stem rather than its leaves — sliced into matchsticks or chunks for stir-fries, with a crispy mild flavor between celery and lettuce.
A pale green Mexican squash with a single seed and crisp watery flesh — a staple across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asian diasporas, eaten in soups, stir-fries, and salads.
A crisp, watery fruit (botanically) eaten as a vegetable — sliced fresh, pickled, or blended into cold soups, with cooling associations everywhere it grows.
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.
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 purple-red Atlantic seaweed eaten as a salty mineral-rich snack and umami ingredient — Maritime Canadian and Irish-Scottish coastal traditions, with a recently-discovered "tastes like bacon when fried" property.
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 crisp leafy green grown in dozens of varieties from delicate butterhead to crunchy iceberg, the foundation of cold salads everywhere.
The starchy underwater rhizome of the sacred lotus plant — when sliced, each round reveals a beautiful symmetrical pattern of hollow tunnels that allows the plant to transport oxygen to its submerged roots; crispy when stir-fried, chewy when simmered, and prized across East and Southeast Asian cuisines.
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 edible fruiting body of fungi (not technically a vegetable, but treated as one), with hundreds of cultivated and wild species ranging from mild button to umami-rich porcini.
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 loose-leaf lettuce variety with deep red-purple leaf tips — used widely in mixed salads, sandwich layers, and decorative plates for its visual contrast against green lettuces.
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.
A large yellow-fleshed Scandinavian root vegetable — a hybrid of cabbage and turnip, known as "swede" in Britain and central to Scandinavian, British, and Nordic-influenced cooking.
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 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 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 small, brightly colored Andean tuber — pink, yellow, red, or speckled — eaten across Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador for its waxy, slightly mucilaginous flesh and earthy sweetness.
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.
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.
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.
The starchy tuberous root of the cassava plant — a global staple crop feeding over 800 million people under different names worldwide, from Latin America's yuca frita to Nigeria's fufu to Brazil's pão de queijo.
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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