The strange cult of white asparagus

If you are in Munich and see people jostling for a spot in line at a produce stand, you can bet they’re queuing for white asparagus. Don’t bother telling them that the green kind is better, because the white stuff has cult status here.

Transcript

It's that time of year again – asparagus time. Actually, no, it’s not that time of year, but global warming has advanced the season into what used to be winter. But you know the season has arrived when people start lining up at produce stands to buy tasteless, vaguely phallic white sticks.

Welcome to Expat Chatter! This is Brenda Arnold. 

Yes, white. Because somebody, somehow, somewhere convinced the German population that white asparagus tastes better than the green. The white shafts are dug out of the ground prematurely before they reach the surface and can produce chlorophyll and pesky byproducts known as “flavor” and “vitamins.” But no matter. To make the dish tasty, all you have to do is drown the steamed asparagus in creamy yellow hollandaise sauce, the same kind you use to add a few hundred calories to eggs to make them Eggs Benedict. This rich sauce also nicely balances out the fact that asparagus by itself is healthy. 

 I’m not just imagining that Germans consume a lot of asparagus. The country plants more of it than any other European country to the tune of 21,270 hectares or 52,600 acres in 2022. 

 White asparagus is not cheap, and there’s a good reason for that. You cannot drive across a field with a giant combine to harvest the asparagus the way they do in the American Midwest to make short work of wheat or corn. Because white asparagus is dug out of the ground, it must be done by hand. You have to bend over to dig down into the dirt and cut it at the base. This is called “Spargelstechen” which means to “pierce” the asparagus.

 I once worked for a company located in a nearby town so famous for its asparagus that its name has become part of the locally harvested crop. Schrobenhausener Spargel is sold for a premium at stands at the Viktualienmarkt in Munich, the high-end produce market, or at stands scattered throughout the city’s pedestrian zone. You can tell it’s asparagus from Schrobenhausen because it’s long and white, as opposed to asparagus from other places, which is, uh, long and white. As integrated as I consider myself to be, the ability to differentiate high-priced unripe asparagus from the no-name brand unripe asparagus as yet eludes me.

 It may be that the German palate favors asparagus, but it is not German hands that do the picking. This is done by seasonal workers from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and other countries where the average worker earns much less than they can earn here. It is backbreaking work and just like the strawberry-picking in California, local people do not want to do it. There are even agencies that act as brokers to hire foreign workers. On my 7:00 a.m. train ride into the asparagus country of Schrobenhausen, I saw these people out in the fields already, bent over, asparagus knife in hand, tossing the pricey white sticks into a binn

Corona caused massive problems for the asparagus farms because of severe restrictions on travel. The usual experienced, seasoned foreign workers were not allowed to enter the country, creating an acute labor shortage to do the harvest. The son of a friend of mine worked on such a farm during college break to earn a bit of extra money. Not surprisingly, he said the work was grueling. Equally unsurprising is that the farmer told him and the other students that their work was “terrible” compared to the usual workers. Twenty-somethings who spend their days sitting in front of computer screens are not known for their dexterity with an asparagus knife.

Observing all the asparagus hype reminds me of what my college marketing professor said to us on the first day of class. He used Coke to explain what marketing is. It’s just sugary water, he said, sold on the image it promotes with extensive advertising featuring trendy-looking people.

 But perhaps advertising for white asparagus must be done in the home. During asparagus season, it was once served at a dinner in my daughter’s kindergarten, and since – being a simple honest American cook at heart – I had only served green asparagus at home, she couldn’t understand why these white sticks were being referred to as “asparagus.” Biting into it, she couldn’t believe that it was being referred to as food at all, much less that it carried the same name as a vegetable she knew and loved, and she has refused to touch it since. 

 Ah well, I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that after all the effort I put into infusing American culture into my kids, it worked. Even if it means they won’t eat white asparagus. 

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