The "Making Do" Challenge -- Sorrel

In order to avoid going to the store during the pandemic, I looked around my yard for ideas on things to eat.  This is not as crazy an idea as that may sound as I tend to plant edibles when I can.

Several years ago I bought four little sorrel plants from the nice lady at the local farmers market and planted them in a corner.  I also bought spinach and planted them at the same time.  In less than a few days, the spinach had disappeared, presumably eaten by rabbits or squirrels or snails.  But the sorrel went untouched.

This was promising.  Even better, the sorrel grew and thrived so much that sometimes I just had to cut off all the leaves and toss them into the compost pile in order to get tender new leaves to eat.  You see, sorrel is like spinach with a tart, acidic bite.  The older leaves are a little tough (but not bad) and a lot more tart than the new leaves.

I often put some fresh sorrel leaves (old or new) into my salads and I really like putting big handfuls of chopped sorrel into soups and stews.  I noticed that the leaves tend to cook down to nothing recognizable as greenery and yet they add flavor, fiber, and nutrition to the dish.

But this was not the time to toss the great quantity of leaves into the compost pile.  I wanted to use them!

What caught my attention was a recipe found in The Gourmet Cookbook, volume 1.  It is a book published through "Gourmet Magazine" and this edition was published as the magazine neared its silver anniversary.  It is a lovely, two-volume boxed set, with a classy reddish-brown and gold cover.  I received as a gift from my friend DS, a talented cook who wanted to pass it on to someone who would appreciate it.  And I do.

6th printing, published 1974, by Gourmet Books, Inc.

I found on page 220 the recipe for

"Purée d'Oseille" or Sorrel Purée.

For 1 cup purée, wash thoroughly and drain 3 pounds sorrel.  In a saucepan over high heat cook the sorrel in the water that clings to the leaves for 10 to 15 minutes, or until it is very soft.  This is called "melted" sorrel.  Drain it in a sieve and press out as much water as possible.  Rub the sorrel through the sieve and add 2 tablespoons butter and salt and pepper to taste.

Three pounds less the weight of four earwigs and two snails

My Notes

Three pounds of sorrel is a lot of sorrel.  A lot of sorrel!  It took nearly all of the leaves my plants had -- and I was grateful for it as they were all older leaves.  None of it went into the compost pile.  I washed it in batches, making sure all the bits of mulch and dead leaves were pulled out.  I left the stems on the leaves.

The biggest saucepan I have could only hold about 1/2 pound of fresh leaves at a time, so I cooked them in batches, too.  Once a batch was "melted", it went into a sieve over a bowl to drain while I cooked the next batch.

About 1/2 pound

Fortunately, the leaves reduced in volume quickly.  The directions called for high heat but I learned to reduce it to about medium (4 out of 10) to keep the leaves from scorching.  It didn't take 10 to 15 minutes to get them very soft, either.  It was more like 4 to 5 minutes per batch.  I cooked them until the stems were soft and floppy as they were the last part to get that way.

From a full pan to a little puddle

I used tongs to turn the leaves while they were cooking.  That helped reduce scorching as well as made sure all the parts were cooked evenly.

All the melted sorrel drained very little -- maybe a tablespoon or so of liquid -- and I was reluctant to push on it much as I didn't want to press it through yet.  I estimated its quantity to be about 3 to 4 cups.

Preparing to push

I pushed the sorrel through the sieve using the backside of a ladle.  This worked well.  I noticed that an area would reduce to mostly fibers while the green purée dripped through to the bowl underneath.  But it was intense work!  I stopped after getting about 2 cups of purée, when I probably could have gotten another 1/2 cup more.

Voila!  See how thick it is?

I mixed in 3 tablespoons of melted butter and about 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper.

The Verdict

The purée was a dark olive-green and very thick.  It mostly held its shape when stirred or piled up with a spoon.

I served it with some roast pork, a green salad, and some leftover red potatoes and rice.  This was a good choice because the sorrel was very tart and needed to be paired with something that could stand up to that.

And wine!  Don't forget the wine!

Yes, it was tart.  Almost too tart for my taste, although my guest taster thought it was wonderful.  We both described it as robust, tart, creamy, and complex.  Like spinach with lemon but with more.  The texture was silky smooth.  A small amount on the plate was plenty for me; my guest had seconds.  We both liked it but as I said, for me it was on the edge of being too tart.  I kept wishing I had cut it with spinach purée or something to tone it down a bit.

So I declare it a success!  Definitely a repeater for when the sorrel patch gets overgrown again, or earlier if I want to try it with new leaves and hope for a lower tartness level.  I wouldn't need to use the entire three pounds, though, to get enough for two.  (The book said the recipe would serve six.)

Two cups of purée is a lot to use up when each serving is small, so I started looking for other ways to include it in a meal.  Once it was thinned with some pork broth to make a sauce to spoon over poached eggs for breakfast.  Another time I put in more salt and pepper and then a little beef bouillon to shift the flavor to more meaty and used it as a side dish.  And yet another day we mixed a few spoonfuls of it into a bean-corn-and-pumpkin soup.  It shifted the flavor of the soup to something different, which was good because it was the third meal where we had the soup.  (Not the third meal in a row!)

I finished using up the sorrel purée by turning it into a soup.  I added a very herbal beef stock, more salt and pepper, chunks of crispy bacon, bits of onion cooked in the bacon fat, a big spoonful of cream cheese, and honey.  Yes, honey!  It seemed to temper the tartness.  I didn't add the honey until after I put in everything else and felt that it was still too tart for my tastebuds; after adding the honey, it was just right.  No, it wasn't sweet or even sweet-and-sour, but tart at a level I liked very much.  The soup was a big hit and I served it with toast (great for dunking!) and some pieces of bacon on the side.  The quantity was just right for two.  Success again!

I wonder how it would taste and what the texture would be if, instead of pushing it through the sieve, I put it through the blender.  That will be an experiment for another day.