If a food item is green, you can guess it will be pretty good for your health. Although many people don’t like eating green vegetables, they can taste good when cooked properly.
You don’t have to eat green vegetables and herbs without cooking them. You also don’t have to cook them blandly. You can add different spices and mix them with other vegetables or even meat to enhance their taste.
Once you try a well-cooked dish of green vegetables, you would never complain about them ever again. Like green vegetables, green herbs are also good for your health.
Green herbs give a tart-like and mouth-watering flavor to your dish. Whether it is a green sauce or just a garnishing finish, herbs play a huge part in making your dish more delicious and presentable.
When it comes to some impressive and tasty green herbs, sorrels are quite popular for their strong and tarty flavors. They are the best to finish off your dish with. Sorrels can also be added into several sauces for some great flavors.
However, if you struggle to find sorrels in local grocery stores, some substitutes may do the job. Before we go on to list some of the best substitutes for sorrel, let’s first comprehend what sorrels actually are.
What Exactly Is Sorrel?
There are many herbs that we use in our dishes on daily basis. Many dishes cannot be completed without mint, parsley, thyme, etc. Even if you use a herb for just garnishing a dish, it will enhance the taste immensely.
Sorrel is a tiny and edible dark green perennial or variegated herb that belongs to the Polygonaceae family. The French term “Sorrel” means spot-on. The leaves of the sorrel are intensely lemony tang.
This popular green herb has strong relations with Scotland.
Sorrels have high oxalic acid content which is why they are sour and have tartness. Dishes like cream soups, steamed meat, and vegetables pair the best with sorrel. People love to puree sorrels and top fresh eggs with the sauce.
What Is The Best Substitute For Sorrel?
Finding a substitute for most ingredients is not difficult. But there are certain food items that have a specific taste which is hard to match. Finding the substitutes of these items can be quite challenging.
Most often, people just try to get the real thing no matter how difficult that is. They travel to different markets just to get a simple ingredient. But sometimes, you don’t have that kind of time and you need an ingredient quickly.
In such a situation, it is okay to go with the nearest option available. The substitute that matches the taste of the original ingredient to a certain degree can be used in such a situation.
Sorrel is a high-end herb which is why finding the ingredient that wouldn’t differ from sorrel is quite challenging.
If you have run out of sorrels and are having trouble finding them in the local grocery store near you, then the following substitutes for sorrel can assist you in completing your dish. Read on.
1. Arugula – The Nearest Substitute Of Sorrel
When it comes to the strong peppery and savory flavors that any herb could provide, sorrel remains the most intense and the strongest herb. Due to the strong and peppery flavors, it is hard to match any other herb with sorrel.
However, arugula is considered to be the nearest herb to sorrel because of its strong and peppery flavors.
People even consider well-matured arugula as a bitter herb. The intensified flavors of the arugula match sorrel to a great extent and provide a lot of value to your dish.
If you don’t have sorrel available in your kitchen as well as the nearby grocery market, arugula should be your top choice to replace sorrel.
However, sorrel has quite a tart taste that arugula fails to provide. You can add a few drops of lemon juice with arugula to compensate for the acidity and tartness that sorrel used to supply.
When it comes to herbs, it is difficult to find a substitute that can give you the exact taste you are looking for. As a result, you will have to mix them with other ingredients to get the right taste.
But as long as you get the taste you require; you don’t have to worry about the flavor of your dish. If you have run out of sorrel and can’t get arugula at the grocery store, then you can check out other substitutes from this list.
2. Rhubarb – A Compatible Substitute For Sorrel
A great variety of sauces and chutneys have a fine content of rhubarb. Due to the excessive tartness and pepper-like flavors, rhubarb is the second-best choice to replace sorrel.
Rhubarb is a vegetable but it tastes more like a fruit. You must have heard about the rhubarb pie that is exclusively eaten on various occasions.
What makes rhubarb a commendable option to replace sorrel is that they both are high in oxalic acid which enhances the tartness and sourness.
You won’t regret adding rhubarb to your sorrel’s recipe since it is going to give you the same exciting flavors. You can also eat rhubarb raw just like sorrel. They both have an equal amount of crisp.
When it comes to rhubarb, people have troubling figuring out the quantity they should use in a dish. If you have no prior experience of using rhubarb in a dish, you won’t know how much of it is too much.
But if you taste raw rhubarb, you will get an idea of its flavors. After that you can use it in a moderate quantity to keep the flavor of your dish balanced.
While making soups, slice up rhubarb and add it in the same quantity that you’d add sorrel.
3. Mustard Greens – Another Competitive Substitute For Sorrel
Just like sorrel, mustard greens are also popular for being a versatile and highly impressive herb. Mustard greens and sorrels usually stand out from all the other herbs due to their excessive peppery and savory flavors.
Makes sure to blend the mustard greens well in a Food Processor before you add them in a dish in place of sorrels. You may also consume mustard greens raw and fresh and can present them well with any other dish.
Like all other herbs, mustard greens are quite beneficial for your health. You can serve them with different dishes to your kids to keep them healthy.
Due to their delicious taste, no one will complain if you make them eat mustard greens in a raw form. With mustard greens, you can get health benefits without having to compromise on the taste.
4. Spinach – A Good Substitute For Sorrel
Due to subtle bitterness and a fine earthy taste, spinach can be a good alternative for sorrels. However, to fulfill the tartness of sorrel, you might want to add a few drops of lemons to the spinach mixture. Both can be eaten raw.
Spinach is also very good for your health. Popeyes gained his strength from spinach and so can you, even if your muscles don’t become buff instantly. Spinach can be eaten in a number of different ways.
There are many spinach dishes of Southeast Asian origin that taste quite delicious. These dishes have become popular outside of Southeast Asia as well.
One of them uses cottage cheese in the recipe and is eaten widely in India. You can also cook Spinach with meat following a Southeast Asian recipe.
Whatever form you decide to eat spinach in, it will surely benefit your health.
Conclusion:
When using a substitute, people’s biggest concern is to get the taste right. In some cases, it may seem impossible to get the exact taste of the original ingredient, but if you have the right substitute, you can make it work.
In case of sour herbs, you may have to use lemon to get the kind of taste you need.
Sorrel is quite popular due to its unique taste. Many herbs are only used for garnishing and don’t taste good in raw form. But sorrel is different from all of them.
It can not only be used in different dishes but it also tastes good in raw form. Due to these properties of this herb, it may seem like its impossible to find its substitute.
But we have found the closest options for you. An herb may not be able to give you the taste of sorrel but you can make it work with the help of a few drops of lemon.
The aforementioned items are the best substitutes for sorrel. You can try all of them one by one if you want or pick an option that you like.
If you already have a favorite herb or vegetable in the list of substitutes, you should go with that. You can use the substitute to make the dish of your choice and share your newfound discovery with your friends and family.