How to store sorrel: useful tips

Sorrel. At the mere mention of each person there is a pleasant sourness in the mouth. In spring and summer he is a frequent guest on the Russian table. And how to store sorrel? After all, in winter, too, sometimes you want green cabbage soup. It’s impossible to leave succulent leaves in the refrigerator, they will quickly go bad.

Popular wisdom has long come up with ways to store sorrel. Of course, with its secrets.

Sorrel Storage Methods

To have vitamins on the menu all year round, there are several options for storing sorrel:

• drying
• pickling
• conservation
• freezing

These methods have been tested by several generations, are completely reliable and retain most of the vitamins.

Preliminary preparation

Before you remove the sorrel for storage, you need to prepare it. Freshly cut leaves are pre-shaken from dry debris. Next, they carefully sort it out, removing damaged and damaged ones, and cut stiff petioles. After all, the greens are washed in several waters, slightly shaking off the liquid.

Tip. Medium-sized leaves are suitable for blanks. The small ones have not scored the right amount of acid, the large ones are already too rough.

How to dry sorrel

Then they are carefully transferred to glass jars, tightly closed with lids. For convenience of further use, you can crumble the drying slightly. Burdock floating in the soup is not a very pleasant sight.

Tip. There are recommendations to cover the finished cans with a cloth or gauze. Then do not be surprised at the violent mold that will appear very soon. The fabric adheres to moisture, which the sorrel absorbs. Lids will be more reliable.

Sorrel Salting

Prepare leaflets as described above. Next, you need a knife, cutting board, ordinary table salt.

Take 100 g per 1 kg of raw material. Sorrel is cut across into strips about 3 cm wide, quickly mixed with salt in a large bowl. Then, they are immediately rammed into jars or food containers so that the juice that starts to stand out remains in the preparation.

Banks are closed, but not corked, put in the refrigerator. This storage method is not suitable for a cellar.

Tip. Mixed with sorrel, you can pickle your favorite greens: dill, chives, cilantro. Except parsley. Nutritionists do not recommend salting it raw.

Freezing

Carefully prepared sorrel is laid out in plastic bags or special food containers, closed, cleaned in a simple freezer.

Leaves can not be cut. Frozen, they easily crumble hands. You can store such a sorrel for 4-5 months.

Tip. To garden greens take up less space in the freezer, you can use special vacuum bags with zip fastener. Then the layer of freezing will be very thin.

Canned sorrel

Great storage option for those with a small refrigerator. Prepared leaves are cut without stalks, stacked as much as they fit in glass jars. Set them in a saucepan with water, turn on the fire. Gradually, the greens settle, so it's time to add a new portion. So do to the very top. Then the cans are corked with metal lids, cooled and cleaned in the pantry or cellar.

This blank is noteworthy in that it does not require additional costs - vinegar, sugar, spices. Sorrel is well stored in its own juice even at room temperature.

Opening a jar in winter, you can cook green cabbage soup, a filling for pies.It is good to add canned sorrel to salads and sauces.

Tip. In the process of harvesting greens changes color to olive. However, the taste and healthy qualities of this do not change.

Common mistakes

Many housewives immediately wash sorrel. How? Unload all the greens in a large bowl, pour cold water. Slightly splash the leaves and throw them into a colander. In this case, all insects remain between the leaves. Well, what prevents to sort out the sorrel in advance? You can replenish the protein supply of the body in more traditional ways than the chitinous membrane.

Yet. How do women roll up winter blanks? They hopped more securely and hop - in the usual movement they turn the jar onto the lid. You cannot do this with a sorrel. It contains so much acid that it corrodes food varnish on the inside of the lid. Opening such a jar in the winter, you can get a beautiful mixture with rusty stains. Iron is useful, but not in the same way!

Many articles recommend drying sorrel, exposing it to direct sunlight. Allegedly so faster. Well, haven't the mothers hammered the current hostesses since childhood that the greens are dried only in the shade? Isn't sorrel green? I want to speed up the process - the oven to the rescue.

Sorrel must not be cut before drying. Most of the juice will flow out, instead of crisp leaves, you will get sun-dried rags. And almost all vitamins are oxidized.

Some housewives believe that 100 g of salt is not enough. This is not true. Oxalic acid is an excellent preservative. Why add extra "white poison"?

It happens that during cooking the whole sorrel is thawed immediately, the right amount is taken, then re-frozen. This is strictly not recommended! Break off the right amount of freezing, immediately throw it into the pan, quickly remove the rest back - these are the correct actions.

In order not to bother with a whole package of frost, lay out the greens in portioned bags at a time.

Naturally, all containers for blanks and lids must be pre-sterilized. Sorrel is sour, but not immortal, spoils in dirty banks.

In the cold pickling method, after prolonged storage on top of the oxalic mass, a white coating sometimes appears. Someone opens a jar, wrinkles his nose, the blank flies into the trash ... what kind of nonsense? Ordinary salt is no longer edible? This is just a salt coating. And he is quite edible.

"Before harvesting, pour the sorrel with boiling water, dry it." The biggest mistake! Leaflets, even large ones, are so tender that any heat treatment will turn them into porridge. How then to store the resulting mess? No pre-treatment with boiling water!

For the same reason, sorrel is not wiped. And then there are such unfortunate advisers "carefully wipe the leaves on both sides with a rag or napkin." And then what to do with sluggish rags? Just throw it in a colander or shake off water from a bunch of greenery. Motion, as a thermometer is shaken.

Cut the leaves as small as possible - another piece of advice from the category of delusional. Why crumble it into porridge? To lose all the leaked juice? Or nothing to chew? So after any storage method, the sorrel becomes soft. Doing unnecessary work is useless.

If there is no confidence in conservation in your own juice, you can calm your darling. In each liter jar, before twisting, put a teaspoon of salt on top without stirring. Evenly distribute, roll up. Now it’s definitely nowhere more reliable.

If you follow all the recommendations to keep sorrel, you can successfully delight yourself with vitamins all year round. Good tone, immunity shake and satisfied faces of the household are guaranteed.

Video: how to prepare sorrel for the winter