Chips & Dip: How to trim, cook and eat an Artichoke

Do you ever have weekends where you feel like you didn't get any down time!?! That's how I felt this weekend. We also lost a day since my husband had a 24 duty starting at 9 am on Sunday. It's 9 pm here and I am just now sitting down to write this blog that I was supposed to do yesterday. And I really trimmed and cooked this artichoke on Friday night!!

Friday nights here are pizza night. We used to order out a lot more in Kansas because we could get pretty good deals and not have to pay more than $20 for enough pizza for at least 2 or 3 meals. But now that we are in Alaska, we are lucky if we can spend less than $40 for the same amount we got in Kansas. So I have started making it instead. I used to make it in Kansas too, but not EVERY week. It was so much easier to order!

But now that we make it again, I can get creative with my toppings. My family is boring. My husband only likes a combination of either cheese, mushrooms, bacon or pepperoni. My daughter only likes bacon and mushrooms. And my son usually takes all the toppings off and just eats it plain cheese. I like to change it up and will eat any topping except pineapple or anchovies.

Since I still had artichokes left to cook, I decided I wanted spinach, chicken, tomatoes, and artichokes on my pizza! So I steamed up the last 2 artichokes to get their yummy hearts. I used to never trim them, except to shorten the stem (it gets really stringy when cooked). But I would always get poked by the spiky leaves whenever I would eat them. So now I just take the time to slice the top and trim each leaf. Only adds a couple of minutes to prep and I don't get poked anymore!

A bonus to me cooking these artichokes, was that later in the weekend, I used the leaves as "chips" in a queso dip I made my husband! I was really impressed with how well that worked. I tried to roast them to get them crispy, but it was taking too long. So I just pulled them out and ate them as is. I may have to try that again when I'm not staring at the oven willing them to cook faster.

Anyways, here is how I prep, cook, and eat an artichoke!

First rinse the artichoke in the sink. I run the water right on it, so it goes between the leaves. If they look kind of dirty, I'll even soak it in the sink for a few minutes then rinse it one more time. Pat it dry as best you can. Holding the stem and heart firmly, slice about 1/2-1 inch off the top. You want to be able to see the tips of the purple leaves in the center. Sometimes I have to slice twice if I don't get deep enough.

Slice about 1-2 inches off of the stem and pull any leaves off that are attached to the stem and not the heart. Then take some scissors and cut the tops off of the rest of the leaves.

Now you are ready to steam the artichokes. I steam them in a large pot with a few inches of water in the bottom. Place them in the pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for about 20 minutes.

When they are done, the leaves should pull off very easily. You should be able to bite down near the top of the leaf and slide the "meaty" part off between your teeth. Normally, this when you sit down with my Creamy Parmesan Sauce and eat all the leaves. But I just made these for the hearts, I ripped all the leaves off and saved them for later!

Stop taking eating the leaves when you get to the really thin ones. Well I still eat them, but you can really only bit the bottom half because the tops of those still have spikes. But you should really stop eating when you see these purple leaves. Just grab them with you fingers and rip them off until you see the choke pictured below.