Kitchen Garden Forum

I have some very healthy sorrel growing in our garden. I use the young tender leaves in salads but my only attempts at cooking it - (simmering it lightly in barely boiling water ) ended up as a brown sludgy stomach heaving disaster so I obviously did something wrong!

Any hints please on how best to cook it palatably?

Can one cook sorrel, Primrose? I only ever thought of it like lettuce, a salad plant.

I wouldn't cook it.

In France, many years ago, I had dinner in a rather fancy restaurant. The fish course was [I think brill], anyway, a white fish. It had the most wonderful sauce with it and simply a few French beans, very small and crunchy. I asked about the sauce which was something I'd never even heard of (young and innocent then!). It was sorrel sauce. Easy to do but you only need a small amount - it goes a long way in terms of flavour. Finely chop a big handful of sorrel (remove the stems first), then soften in butter, it will turn brown, this is the acid doing this. Finally let the sauce down with a little double cream - but be careful, single cream will split.
The other method of doing this is to make a roux, and once the flour is cooked out add finely chopped sorrel and finally make the sauce to your liking with milk - a kind of flavoured white sauce. Both of these are excellent with white fish or with eggs.
Hope this helps, JB.

Recipe sounds intriguing JohnB. May pluck up courage and try it. It,s the very offputting brown colour to which it turns when cooked which is a real deterrent to experimenting with it. We may be aware that its the acid causing the discolouration but it's very true that one does tend to eat with one's eyes.

I am using sorrel for a green soup. I am from https://worldcams.tv/united-states/harp ... k-giraffes, but this recipe is from Eastern Europe. And it is easy to cook – take broth, potato, carrot, onion, cut boiled eggs and a handful of cut sorrel. Nothing difficult. You can also add green herbs you like and serve it with cold sour cream. It is tasty.

Difficult to explain but a slightly lemony bitter sludgy taste ! You can really onky eat small quantities at a time. We tend to use just a few small young leaves in a mixed salad otherwise it can be overwhelming.