It is a traditional cooking vegetable in many parts of the world. There are two main ways that it is cooked. One is a very quick cooking over high heat. It can be dry-fried in a very very hot dry pan, in order to wilt it slightly, then dressed with something like a vinaigrette or with citrus juice. I stir-fry it in a number of ways, according to various Chinese regional techniques. It is well suited to recipes that call for saan choy (aka Vietnamese spinach or Malabar spinach or slippery vegetable). I find that it goes nicely with fermented black beans, and also with fish sauce -- the funky fermented pungency of these seasonings goes well with the slightly acidic taste and juicy texture of the purslane.

The other major way to cook it, worldwide, is to stew it. Mexican cooking is particularly good with the stewed version. Throughout Mexico you will find recipes for verdolagas -- that's Spanish for purslane. Stewed with meat and chiles and onions, as in the nearly universal Mexican dish puerco con verdolagas, it does become mucilaginous, but the effect is very like putting okra in a gumbo. (I have substituted purslane for okra in gumbo, actually, it works really well if you can't find good okra.) Verdolagas con salsa (green and red) is also a very popular dish and really tasty. I like verdolagas con salsa verde as a companion to lengua (tongue).

You'll also find purslane in many other world cuisines. The Turkish dish domatesli semizotu is a stewed tomato and purslane dish that I like a great deal. It's along the lines of the Greek green bean dish fasolakia, if you're familiar with that. The Greeks also cook purslane, sometimes with lemon and potato and sumac and thyme, which I personally think is quite inspired.

The only thing to bear in mind with purslane is that you either want it raw/barely cooked through, or else you wanna cook the hell out of it, probably with an acid along for the ride. Anything in between is likely to seem unpleasantly slimy to the American palate.