Komatsuna — Japanese mustard spinach, a fast-growing, mild Brassica that eats like a cross between spinach and a gentle mustard green. Versatile raw or quickly cooked.
Komatsuna grows fast and tolerates both heat and cold, making it a productive, low-cost green for urban gardens and CSA boxes serving Black communities, and an easy bridge for spinach lovers into the brassica family.
Komatsuna is exceptionally calcium-rich for a leafy green — comparable to collards — paired with vitamin K1 to route calcium into bone and away from arteries, important where lactose intolerance limits dairy calcium. As a Brassica it carries glucosinolates yielding sulforaphane and DIM for cancer protection and estrogen metabolism, plus dietary nitrate for nitric-oxide blood pressure control and iron for anemia. Its mildness and fast cooking preserve vitamin C and folate.
Tender enough to eat raw in salads or wilt in 2-3 minutes. Strip nothing on young leaves; remove thicker stems on mature ones. Excellent in quick stir-fries and miso soup.
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