Asparagus is a vegetable that has been in cultivation for millenia. The Greeks and Romans ate and enjoyed asparagus, and the vegetable has also been immortalized in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. The portion of asparagus that is eaten is the immature shoot, which is often referred to as an 'asparagus spear' for its spear-like shape.

Counterintuitively, thin young asparagus spears are often tougher than larger, plumper ones. Select spears that are well filled-out; if the skin is wrinkled or concave, the asparagus has been on display too long and is beginning to dry out. White asparagus is just regular asparagus that has been shielded from sunlight.

If you have only eaten canned asparagus, you don't know what you are missing - the limp, soggy canned product bears little resemblance to fresh asparagus and should be avoided. Asparagus should be cooked quickly, just long enough to be easily pierced with a fork. Some people bundle asparagus spears into sheaves and cook them standing in a tall pot, with the tougher ends in the boiling water and the tender heads being steamed. You can even purchase special asparagus steamers just for this purpose.

When preparing asparagus, snap off the tough ends by hand, rather than using a knife. You need the sensitivity of touch to tell you where to break the spear - the stalk will break naturally where it becomes too tough to be edible. Asparagus is naturally quite low in calories, but is often served with rich calorie-dense sauces such as Hollandaise and butter sauces. Cook asparagus more briefly than you would for a dinner side dish to serve it as a finger food on a veggies-and-dip tray.

Asparagus is a great source of dietary potassium and folic acid and acts medicinally as a diuretic. It also has the peculiar property, but only in some consumers, of making the urine take on a distinctive odor. Even odder, not everyone can detect the asparagus-odor in urine, and those who produce asparagus-smelling urine aren't necessarily those who can detect the odor, while those who can detect the odor aren't necessarily those who produce it. However, both traits appear to be genetically determined.