Magenta Spreen & Fat Hen

Fat hen loves nitrogen rich soils, often growing abundantly in animal yards. Be it on the farm, your lifestyle block or the suburban chicken run, if you have Chickens, Sheep or Pigs, you just might have Fat hen too! Not only does feeding this super nutritious plant to your chickens fatten them up & make their egg yolks yellower, it’s also absolutely delicious and not to be missed on the dinner table.

For years fat hen would grow in my chickens run and even after their constant digging & scratching over the soil, it would pop up every single time that I rotated the chickens off the soil. The tiny little seeds can stay viable for 30-40 years, so it’s really no wonder. In fact, seeds of Fat hen were found in a Danish archaelogical site dating back 1700 years and were succesfully grown in recent times! The seeds have also been found in the stomach contents of the ‘Tollund Man’. (A mummified corpse that was found preserved in a peat bog in Denmark, who lived during the 5th century). This indicates fat hen’s use as a food source by humans for thousands of years.

Another name for fat hen is wild spinach, and it does in fact make the most excellent spinach substitute, full of flavor, creaminess and nutrition. Fat hen is apparently one of the most nutritious greens that’s ever been analysed! It’s rich in Vitamins B & C, iron, calcium, protein, zinc, copper, manganese, magnesium, potassium, fibre & Vitamin A. It also contains upto 43% protein by dry weight. This really is an absolutely astounding nutritional plant!

Fat hen was apparently once the most common of wild spinaches, but with the introduction of garden spinach to Europe from Asia it fell out of favor.

Use the fresh, young leaves as a spinach substitute in salads, quiches, casseroules, soups, stews etc. I like to sautee leaves (recipe below).The seeds are also incredibly nutritious, rich in starch and can be eaten raw or toasted and ground and added into flour to bake bread, cakes, muffins, biscuits or pancakes. Some suggest not eating too many seeds which are high in saponins. The stalks are quite fibrous and are best discarded.

Fat hen touts some impressive medicinal properties and has laxative, anti bacterial & anti inflammatory properties. There are studies supporting the use of fat hen for sugar imbalances and it’s also used as a tonic for digestion & internal parasites. It’s commonly used as a poultice for skin sores & burns. In Rongoa Maori medicine, fat hen is cooked & eaten like spinach, then the cooking water is used as a tonic, taken 3-5 times a day to treat boils & blood ailments.

Fat hen is reportedly one of the most widespread weeds in the world, so let’s just say you’ve probably come across it before, whether you recognised it or not. If you have animals on your property you may be in luck and have an abundance of Fat hen. Instead of looking at it like a prolific annoying weed, perhaps you’ll now see an abundance of delicious wild spinach feasts, with both nutritional & medicinal value!

There are many wild varieties of what we call fat hen, but the most common is Chenopodium album. Note that fat hen is very closley related to magnenta spreen – a nutritious green commonly grown by gardeners in New Zealand, which looks almost identical but has a beautiful purple flourish to the leaves. Seeds are easily found online and both plants share the same properties.

Fat hen does contain oxalates, like many foods, so if you suffer from gout or kidney stones, then do your own research on this subject. In general cooking reduces the oxalate content.

Learn more in my Hot Season Foraging Guide