Foraging and Cooking With Wild Sorrel

Reader Contribution by Leda Meredith
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I walk through the Saturday farmers market near my home in Brooklyn, N.Y. A heap of beautiful French sorrel leaves for sale catches my eye. Their pleasantly sour, lemony flavor is so good with seafood, steamed vegetables or in soup. I’m not buying though— don’t need to. Every park, community garden and backyard near me —and across most of North America— has some kind of sorrel growing in it.

The most common variety is yellow wood sorrel, Oxalis stricta (other Oxalis species are also edible). Often

mistaken for clover, this diminutive plant has leaves with three heart-shaped leaflets, small yellow flowers and seed pods that look like very tiny okra (I call them fairy okra). Oxalis loves to grow where it gets plenty of sunlight, but I find that plants growing in partial sunlight have the tenderest leaves.

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