Wondering what to do with sorrel leaves? This guide covers how to pick them, cook them, store them, and swap them, plus 22 recipes to put them to work.

What are sorrel leaves?

Sorrel is a leafy green herb with a sharp, lemony, almost sour tang that sets it apart from every other green on the produce shelf. The arrow-shaped leaves look a lot like young spinach, but one bite tells you they're something else entirely.

That tartness comes from oxalic acid, the same compound in rhubarb, and it's the whole reason cooks reach for the plant. Sorrel brings built-in acidity, so it can do the job lemon usually does, but as a leaf rather than a squeeze of juice.

Two kinds turn up in kitchens. Common garden or broadleaf sorrel has large, mild leaves, while French sorrel is smaller, more shield-shaped, and the finer-flavored of the two. This is the cooking green and has nothing to do with the red hibiscus drink also called sorrel in the Caribbean.

Cooking With Sorrel

The signature trick is that sorrel melts. Add the leaves to a hot pan and they collapse in under a minute into a soft, khaki-green puree, much faster than spinach.

That brown-green color is normal. The acid simply dulls the bright green, and it's no sign the sorrel has gone off.

Soup is the classic home. A sorrel soup, often thickened with potato and finished with cream or egg yolk, turns the herb's tartness into something silky and comforting. Sorrel Soup (Irish), Potato-Sorrel Soup, and Cream Sorrel Soup all run that route, and the cream tempers the bite.

Sorrel and fish are a marriage. The leaf's acidity cuts through rich, oily fish exactly the way a lemon wedge would, which is why Sunshine Poached Fish with Sorrel and Spaghetti with Salmon & Sorrel (Or Spinach) lean on it as a sauce.

It also wilts into eggs beautifully. Sorrel Frittata and Sorrel Omelet fold the melted leaves into a soft, tangy custard.

Raw, young sorrel is a salad green. A few small, tender leaves add a bright, lemony snap to a mixed salad, as in Ojawashkwawegad (Wild Green Salad), and it can be blitzed cold into Fresh Sorrel Mayonnaise.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Sorrel partners with anything rich or fatty that wants cutting through. Cream, butter, eggs, potato, and oily fish like salmon are its natural foils, and it sits well alongside chives and tarragon and chervil among the herbs.

There's one real piece of cookware advice: avoid reactive pots. Sorrel's acid reacts with bare aluminum and cast iron, picking up a metallic taste and an unappealing gray tint, so cook it in stainless steel or enameled pots.

The biggest mistake is overdoing it. Sorrel is potent, and a big handful can turn a dish aggressively sour, so start with less than you think and taste as you go.

People also overcook it, though since it's almost always cooked just to wilting, the bigger risk is simply using too much.

Substitutes

There's no clean swap for sorrel's specific lemon-tartness, but you can fake it. Use spinach for the body and color, then add lemon juice to bring the acid: about a tablespoon of juice per few cups of spinach gets you close.

Other tart greens come nearer in spirit. Young dandelion greens or watercress or arugula bring their own bite, and a handful of these mixed with a squeeze of lemon makes a passable stand-in for raw sorrel in a salad.

For a sauce or soup, baby spinach plus lemon juice (or a little white wine or vinegar) is the most reliable route. Add the acid at the end and adjust to taste, since you're rebuilding the sourness sorrel would have supplied on its own.

Buying and Storing

Sorrel is rarely in supermarkets; look for it at farmers markets in spring and early summer, or grow your own, since it's a hardy perennial that comes back every year. Choose crisp, bright leaves with no yellowing or wilting, and pick the smallest, youngest leaves for the best flavor.

Sorrel is delicate and doesn't keep long. Wrap the leaves loosely in a damp paper towel, slip them into a bag, and refrigerate, where they stay good for only two or three days before going limp.

For longer storage, sorrel freezes well as a puree. Wilt the leaves in a dry or lightly buttered pan, let them cool, then freeze the puree in small portions, ready to drop straight into a soup or sauce. The texture is already soft, so freezing costs you nothing.

Quick facts

In Chinese

酸模叶子

British (UK) term

Sorrel leaves

en français

feuilles d'oseille

en español

hojas de acedera

Recipes using sorrel leaves

There are 22 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 22 recipes