Cobblers Pegs |C
🌿 Product Name: Cobblers Pegs (Xuyến Chi / Đơn Buốt) 300g +/-30g
Scientific Name: Bidens pilosa
👉 Harvest Date: ~60 days to maturity under good conditions (young shoots/tips can be picked earlier, on an ongoing basis, as this is a fast-growing, self-seeding plant with multiple growth cycles per year)
💚 Natural flavors: Green and earthy, similar to lettuce with a resinous, "marine" undertone that softens once boiled or stir-fried. Not bitter, but not great raw either — best blanched first to remove the raw/grassy edge, similar to how water spinach is prepared. Rich in flavonoids and phenolic acids (caffeic, ferulic, p-coumaric acid).
🍳 Recipe Suggestions:
- Cookpad: No dedicated Vietnamese recipes found on Cookpad for xuyến chi/đơn buốt — it's foraged/eaten more as a folk remedy than a mainstream cooking ingredient. General prep: blanch young shoots, then stir-fry with garlic (similar to rau muống).
- Run Away Rice: No recipe found — this plant isn't part of their catalog.
👩🍳 Nutrition Value:
- USDA: No FoodData Central entry exists — it's not in the standard USDA database.
- Nutritionix: No entry found either.
- Available data point: ~63mg vitamin C per 100g (from published nutritional reviews on Bidens pilosa/"blackjack"), plus documented flavonoids and phenolic acids — but not in standard nutrition-facts format.
Note: this plant is used far more as a folk medicinal herb in Vietnam (treating colds, fevers, inflammation) than as a mainstream vegetable, so recipe and nutrition-database coverage is thin compared to the other items in your list. One important caution repeated across sources: it strongly absorbs environmental toxins/heavy metals, so it should only be harvested from clean, unpolluted areas.
🩺 Medicinal value: Bidens pilosa (cobbler's pegs) is used in traditional folk medicine across many regions, valued for its bitter, cooling properties, with folk use to help support digestion and the immune system.
