One of the first things I did when I moved to California was plant sorrel in my backyard. It is my kind of veggie: Tart, tender, drought-resistant, indestructible. Ignore it and sorrel thrives. Stomp on it and it comes back stronger. And it’s green almost all year long.
Sorrel soup is a classic. It is a harbinger of spring all over Europe, and several versions of it exist from Scotland to France to Russia.
Sorrel, like many early-spring greens, is a tonic after so many months of eating roots and preserved meats. It is very high in Vitamin C and reasonably high in iron. It’s tang — I call it “lemonade in a leaf” — comes from oxalic acid, the same thing that make its cousin rhubarb taste the way it does.
Sorrel is exceptional paired with seafood or chicken, and I often make a simple sorrel sauce whenever I have some trout or salmon or pheasant around.
Everything about sorrel soup sounded wonderful, save one: For whatever reason, sorrel turns olive green almost the second it touches the heat. Sorrel looks like overcooked collard greens even before it’s fully wilted. And I have a thing about overcooked greens, although I am trying to get over it. I want my greens to shine like emeralds, not look like the side of an Army truck.
I stood in my yard, staring at my gigantic sorrel patch. Would another year pass without me making sorrel soup? I got out my scissors. No, I’d suck it up and deal with the drab.
You don’t have to garden to enjoy sorrel. I happen to grow the common garden sorrel that was developed in France centuries ago, but there are several wild sorrel species that live in North America.
Most common are the oxalis family, of which there are scores. Chief among this clan is creeping wood sorrel, Oxalis corniculata, which looks like shamrocks with little yellow flowers. It turns bronze in cold weather and often infiltrates your lawn. There is another sorrel that lives in the West Coast, Oxalis albicans. It too has shamrocks, only they’re larger and the yellow flowers are the color of saffron-and-cream. You see this sorrel a lot in the Bay Area.
In the woods you will find sheep sorrel, Rumex acetosella. It has tiny, arrow-shaped leaves and grows in a little rosette. Sheep sorrel can carpet the forest floor. My garden sorrel is a relative of this one.
Since the French really pioneered the cultivation of sorrel, I decided to make my sorrel soup a French one. There are scores of recipes for this soup, but if you want to make a classic French dish you go to the classic French cookbook: Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My version of this recipe differs from Julia’s only in that I used wild onions instead of regular onions, and I used more sorrel. Other than that, it is an homage to a master.
As you might expect from a vegetable whose chief attribute is tartness, this soup would be inedible without the cream and eggs to temper it. With them, however, it becomes a bright, smooth wake-up call from a long winter. All it needed for total balance was a good loaf of bread and a crisp white wine. Enjoy!
Sorrel Soup, French Style
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
- 1/2 cup chopped green onions, ramps or other wild onion
- 4-6 cups of chopped sorrel, packed
- Salt
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1 quart chicken stock or vegetable stock
- 2 egg yolks
- 1/2 cup cream
Instructions
- Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the green onions or ramps and turn the heat to medium-low. Cover the pot and cook gently for 10 minutes.
- While the onions are cooking, pour the stock into another pot and bring to a simmer.
- Turn the heat up, add the sorrel leaves and a healthy pinch of salt to the pot with the onions and stir well. When the sorrel is mostly wilted, turn the heat back to medium-low, cover and cook 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Mix in the flour and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes.
- Whisk in the hot stock, stirring constantly. Bring this to a simmer.
- To finish the soup, whisk together the egg yolks and cream. Temper the mixture by ladling a little soup into it with one hand, while you whisk the egg-cream mix with the other. Repeat this three times. (You are doing this to prevent the eggs from scrambling) Now start whisking the soup. Pour the hot egg-cream-soup mixture into the pot with the soup, whisking all the way. Add the final tablespoon of butter. Let this cook -- below a simmer -- for 5 minutes. Do not let it boil or the soup will break. Serve at once.
Hi Hank,
Great recipe, thank you. Have you tried making a big batch and freezing some? I made this and it tasted great at the time but I froze the rest and found it tasted different upon thawing. You mentioned your sorrel sauce doesn’t freeze well and I’m wondering if this is the same? Thanks!
Jean: No, I never freeze it. The egg liaison breaks.
I highly recommend this recipe. I’ve made it a few times now and don’t alter or substitute anything except to occasionally use leeks. Sorrel is common here in Russia, ramps less so. In the past I would make sorrel soup with potato, but never again! One thing I’ve learned is that sorrel stalk can be horribly fibrous and nearly ruin a soup, so now I’m careful to discard all of the stalk before chopping the leaves.
This is a lovely recipe that I have used a number of times. Just one correction. For those from West Virginia, Gallo hearty burgundy is the ideal wine pairing. LOL.
Thank you for your recipe. We have sorrel growing in our herb garden, and aside from serving it as part of a salad, I was not sure what else to do with it. I know that the French have incorporated sorrel in their cuisine for many years. We have not tried this soup yet, but I am sure it will be delicious when we do.
:0)
well what better place to land as we (in NZ) are at the end our second week of COVID -19 lock down ( 2 of 4) – lots of sorrel in my late summer/autumn and this was fabulous I am so enjoying a back to basics approach to cooking
Fantastic recipe! This has become an immediate favorite. Try adding the barest hint of cayenne for a little added pizzazz.
This was my favorite new recipe of last year. I ended up using scapes in place of onions and it was lovely. I can’t wait to make it again this weekend with ramps. Thanks so much for sharing a great recipe!
This soup sounds amazing! I recently inherited a community garden and the prior owners of my plot have a huge amount of red-veined sorrel growing in it. I’m so excited to use it in recipes. Will this soup work just as good with red-veined sorrel?
Giuletta: Yep, although the color will be different.
Wonderful! There was a freak snow storm in NYC in November, so I harvested all of my remaining sorrel and made this soup. It was a perfect transition from the fruits of summer to the threshold of winter. Normally, saying good-bye to the garden at the end of the season is depressing, but this soup was a ray of sunshine in a bowl. Thanks!