Green borsch is a popular summer dish. Moreover, it is not only tasty, but also healthy. But in winter you also want to pamper your loved ones with dishes with a fresh, sorrel flavor. But, unfortunately, this product cannot be found on store shelves in the cold season. Therefore, many housewives harvest sorrel for the winter. There are several ways: drying, freezing the green mass, pickling whole and cut leaves, sterilizing and preserving in the form of mashed or boiled mass. In this article you will find recipes for how to prepare sorrel for the winter. Choose the one that suits you best or try a few. And then on cold days the aroma of green borscht will often reign in your kitchen.
Frozen sorrel
This method will help to best maintain the taste of the vegetable crop. You can also save sorrel for the winter by mixing it with nettles. The green vitamin assortment will be completely ready for dressing the borscht, because previously the leaves are sorted, washed and cut in the usual way. The ratio of sorrel to nettle is 2: 1. The mass is mixed, transferred to a plastic bag and placed in a freezer for storage.
"Salty" harvest of sorrel for the winter with whole leaves
To keep the leaves uncut, pickle a wooden tub for pickling . Wash the sorrel, dry with a towel and, pouring salt, lay in layers. About one kilogram of its leaves will require approximately thirty grams. Install oppression from above. Salting will give a little “shrinkage,” so report several layers of green to the tub every day for a week until the tank is almost full. Before use, the leaves are washed, cut and put into a dish. This is how sorrel is harvested for the winter, if you have a large amount of fresh green mass, you also need to have a special container for salting and a room for storing it. But you can salt the leaves in a simpler way, which is described below.
Chopped sorrel with salt
Small portions of green leaves, cut and mixed with salt, can be stored in glass jars. Preliminary preparation of sorrel is usual. Then salt is added to the chopped mass (based on one kilogram of sorrel - one hundred grams). A well-mixed mixture is placed in clean jars and a little tamped. Having closed with plastic covers, store the salted sorrel in the refrigerator. Before use, you can not rinse it: just cook a dish, such as borsch, do not salt in advance, but taste it at the end of cooking.
Canned Mashed Potatoes
Such preparation of sorrel for the winter will make it possible to use green mass not only as a partial dressing for borsch in addition to leaves, but can also act as the main component of refreshing sauces. To make mashed potatoes, first green shoots (1 kg), blanch in boiling water with salt (70-80g per 2 liters) and bay leaf (2-3 pcs) for three to five minutes. After removing the seasoning and letting it cool slightly, wipe them through a sieve or beat in a blender. Lay the mashed potatoes in clean jars, which are then sterilized in boiling water for a certain time: half-liter - 20 minutes, "seven hundred" - half an hour. Roll up, turn over and wrap until completely cooled. How pleasant it will be to remember the sunny summer after a winter dinner while eating fragrant green borsch!