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Recognizing, Picking and Using Miracle Leeks: You Should Know That

Miracle garlic is a relative of wild garlic. He convinces with his strong taste and a healing effect. Here you can find out what you need to look out for and how you can use magic leeks in cold dishes.

Recognizing miracle onions correctly

Miracle garlic, also known as Berlin wild garlic, is a relative of wild garlic. The plant originally comes from the Caucasus region and has spread across Central Europe over the centuries. You can recognize the herb above all by its intense smell, which is strongly reminiscent of onions or garlic.

Visually, the plant is characterized by green, narrow leaves – similar to grass – and white flowers. The leaves have no stalk and grow straight out of the bulb. Overall, the magic onion can grow up to 30 centimeters high. You can tell the herb from wild garlic by its narrow leaves, while real wild garlic has broad leaves.

Caution: Do not confuse the magic leek with the poisonous lily of the valley. In the latter, the leaves grow from a stem. In addition, the strong leek smell is missing.

Finding, gathering and processing Miracle Onions

Miracle leeks bloom from April to May and you can find the plant mainly in river meadows, forests and parks. You can gather the herb in forests. On the other hand, you should leave it near sprayed fields and where there are many dogs and cats.

By the way: You should not cultivate miracle onions in the garden, as the herb can spread quickly and uncontrollably. So it is an invasive neophyte.

Miracle leeks are ideal for cold dishes. The entire plant is edible, i.e. the leaves as well as the flower buds and bulb. You should not heat the plant, otherwise its aroma will be lost. If you can’t use the magic leeks fresh, you can simply freeze them.

Wunderlauch tastes similar to chives or wild garlic, but has a much milder aroma. It is therefore ideal for pesto, herb butter or cream cheese and quark preparations.

Ingredients and healing effects

Miracle leek has many positive effects: It is rich in allicin, essential oils, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial flavonoids and vitamin C. The herb thus has an appetite-stimulating, blood pressure-lowering, cholesterol-lowering and immune-boosting effect.

The herb is also often used to treat digestive problems. Whether raw or processed – the miracle leek has a positive effect on the gastrointestinal tract. The sulfur compound allicin, which is also contained in garlic, kills intestinal fungi, among other things. So far there have been no scientific studies on the medical effects of miracle leeks, but the herb probably does no harm.

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Cooking Tips

Eating Leeks Raw: What You Should Consider with Winter Varieties

Wondering if you can safely eat leeks raw? We have the answer and will show you what to look out for when eating raw vegetables.

Leeks – also known as leeks – contain many healthy ingredients, such as iron and magnesium as well as vitamin C and vitamin K. You can buy them from regional cultivation almost all year round (from July to April).

A distinction is made between summer leeks, which grow in the summer months, and winter leeks, which are grown in the winter months. The difference between the two varieties lies in the taste: the winter leek is much hotter and more bitter.
So you can use leeks in the kitchen almost all year round. But you can not only cook or fry leeks, you can also eat them raw. The advantage of this is that the many nutrients and vitamins are retained and, unlike with cooking or frying, are not lost. In another article, you will learn more about why you should eat vegetables raw.

Eat leeks raw – you should pay attention to this

With our little hints you can safely eat not only the summer leek, but also the tart winter leek raw:

Especially if you want to eat leeks raw, you should cut leeks and wash them well to remove the soil between the leaves.
Raw leeks taste similar to onions. That’s why you’re less likely to bite into a leek than into a crunchy apple. On the other hand, it is good to chop raw leeks finely and add them as an ingredient in a salad, for example.


As already described above, the winter varieties are tart and sometimes quite hot. They differ in this from the summer varieties. Would you like to eat raw leeks in winter too? You can take the spiciness out of the winter leek by blanching it briefly in apple juice or water.

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Food

9 Amazing Facts About Leeks

You rarely find leeks on the shelves of grocery stores, people know little about it and most of them simply do not know how to cook. And in vain, this representative of onions is a storehouse of vitamins and nutrients necessary for the human body, many do not even guess how many diseases leeks can cure. Leeks, when compared with their congeners, are a real giant. However, this is also a bow. Big and tasty. The advantage of leeks is that not only the leg is edible, but also the leaves.

Raw Green Organic Leeks Ready to Chop
  1. The vegetable has long been recognized as a symbol of one of the parts of the Kingdom of Great Britain – Wales; every year on March 1, residents celebrate a holiday – St. David’s Day. There is a legend according to which during the battle against the Saxons in the 6th century, the bishop and educator David of Welsh, ordered his army to attach a leek to his helmet to distinguish his comrades-in-arms from enemies.
  2. The Roman emperor Nero used it in large quantities, trying to preserve his voice for delivering lengthy speeches to the public.
  3. Several centuries ago, this vegetable was used as an aphrodisiac, people believed that it increased sexual desire and drank the juice from leek stalks mixed with celery. To this day, this recipe is used in traditional medicine.
  4. Leek is a vegetable, without exaggeration, deserved and famous. He has a place of honor in haute cuisine. And all because it is very fond of French chefs – the trendsetters of culinary fashion. It is also very popular in Italy and Poland, however, their leeks are usually added to soups and, following the example of the French, are used in a bunch of aromatic herbs. But in reality, the culinary uses of leeks are much broader. Most of the world’s leeks are grown in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In Great Britain, the main symbol of Wales is considered to be the leek.
  5. Unlike other types of leeks, the plant is demanding: it does not like cold weather or heat, but the soil loves sandy or silty, well fed with organic matter. They grow it from seeds, and those seeds must first be soaked, then planted in pots, then transplanted into open ground, thinned out, spud, and so on. In a word, an aristocrat! Fortunately, although its storage requirements are less demanding: in the refrigerator, in the vegetable compartment, it can be stored for 7–8 days without loss of quality. And in a well-ventilated cool closet, it will “live” for several months.
  6. In medical nutrition, leeks are widely used due to such properties as improving appetite and diuretic effect. Leeks are useful for obesity, indigestion, gout, arthritis, kidney stones, high blood pressure.
  7. Leeks are added to soups and salads, stews, and sauces, they are used to make fillings for pies and cakes, baked, fried, stewed, steamed, grilled … Young leek stalks are good in fresh salads, they are eaten whole, with herbs … But over time, the green leaves become coarse and fibrous, the most you can do with it is to add such a leaf to a soup or stew for flavor.
  8. Why do we cry when we peel onions? It turns out that onions contain “lacrimator”. This is a substance that is released when peeling onions, as a result of certain chemical reactions, sulfuric acid is formed, which irritates the mucous membrane of the eyes and, of course, tears.
  9. Leeks, like any vegetable, should be washed before use, but there are tricks. Leek is grown on sandy soils, and getting rid of small grains of sand that are hidden between the leaves is not easy. The onion stalk should be cut in half lengthwise and rinsed under running water. And in order to wash off all the dirt completely, after that you need to rinse the cut stem in cool water with baking soda (1 tablespoon of soda per 1 liter of water).
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