How to cook a perfect artichoke

i want to show you how to cook the most perfect artichoke but first we need an artich choke and it looks like we have a really good one right here the very first thing we’re going to do is heat up some water in my steamer dab this is a Japanese clay pot that comes with this attachment which is a steamer tray that I put in the pot like that we’re just going to bring this to a boil while the steamer heats up we’re going to trim up this artichoke i already rinsed it off so artichokes are actually part of the thistle family they’re a flower and if you allow them to continue to grow they grow the most beautiful iridescent ultraviolet flowers that pollinators love but what we’re going to do is we’re going to trim this up a little bit we want to cut off all the pokey bits here makes it a little bit easier to eat and depending on which variety you get sometimes they can be a little bit more pokier than others this variety is called a green globe artichoke which is pretty common and each of these artichoke leaves is connected to the heart of the artichoke which is the part that you eat and then I like to take a little peeler to the stock like this because the stock can be edible as well with artichokes you kind of want to work quickly because they start to oxidize pretty quickly and turn black we’re going to cut this in half and I’m going to show you what it looks like on the inside so the part that you eat all these little leaves are attached to the heart down here and then this fuzzy part is called the choke hence artichoke and this part is not edible you can kind of see it’s already starting to oxidize and we’re going to steam these until the stem is fork tender while that steams we’re going to make our super delicious seasoning sauce which is just going to be olive oil about an 1/8 of a cup the zest of half of a lemon and one garlic clove grated salt and pepper so the way that I like to cook artichokes is to steam them and then broil them with our seasoning mixture on top and I just feel like it gets the heart of it a little bit crispy the lemon zest and the garlic bring out some of that butteriness in the artichokes you can also do this in the toaster oven air fryer or on the grill as well but it’s super important that you steam them first because it parcs them otherwise you’ll get something that’s kind of rubbery see if they’re ready by poking the fork in right there and then I’m going to spread the seasoning mixture all over the artichoke trying to get in between those leaves under the broiler they go these look incredible and I always like to have a little dipping sauce with my artichokes whether it’s mayonnaise or a ioli to me this is the most perfect artich choke and I’m going to show you how to eat it there’s a little bit of a method when it comes to eating artichokes so again the fuzzy choke is inedible but we’re going to take the leaves from the outer part and they peel off pretty easily and then you dip the heart of the leaf