Lettuce leaves are edible, and both their nutrition and how to eat them are worth knowing about

Lettuce leaves (asparagus lettuce leaves) are completely edible. Many people habitually pick off the leaves and throw them away when preparing asparagus lettuce, keeping only the stem for cooking, but in fact the leaves have a fresh taste with a faint, delicate aroma, and as long as they are handled properly, they make a fine home-style dish.

From a nutritional standpoint, asparagus lettuce leaves contain a variety of vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber, and their overall nutritional value is no less than that of the stem. The greener the leaves, the more abundant their chlorophyll and similar components usually are. What is more, the leaf fiber is fairly tender, so once cooked it absorbs flavors more easily than the stem.

As for how to eat them, asparagus lettuce leaves can be stir-fried plain, stir-fried with garlic, blanched and served as a cold salad, or chopped up for soup or egg pancakes. Because the leaves contain lactucin, they have a slight bitterness; if you are not used to it, you can first blanch them briefly in boiling water and then rinse them in cold water, which noticeably reduces the bitterness.

There are also a few details worth noting when eating them. When choosing, pick ones whose leaves are emerald green and neither yellowed nor wilted, and when washing, soak and rinse them several times to remove dust and residue. Asparagus lettuce leaves are somewhat cooling in nature, so people with a weak digestive system should not eat too much at one time; eating them after blanching is gentler.