Salting bracken for winter

With the growing popularity of Asian cuisine, unusual products are increasingly appearing on our tables. One of these is the bracken fern - a fairly common plant. In Russia, it grows in the middle belt, Siberia, the Far East and the Urals.

This plant is not eaten raw. Usually the stems of the fern are fried, boiled and salted for the winter. Salted fern stalks turn out juicy, savory in taste and are used as an independent dish or a side dish to the main one. They are added to salads, soups are prepared on the basis of orlyak.

Salting a fern for the winter does not take much time. To do this, you will need the young shoots of eaglet and salt themselves.

Wash the stems well under running water and dry them, spreading them out on a kitchen towel.

Take a container for salting. It can be a wooden barrel, a large plastic bowl or a bucket. An ordinary jar is not suitable for these purposes, since it is impossible to put a load in its thin neck.

Pour a little salt into the selected container for salting and lay the clean dried stalks. Then sprinkle salt again and put the fern. Thus, decompose the whole orlyak, sprinkling abundantly each layer with salt. On top of the whole fern, also pour a thick layer of salt. It is better to take coarse salt. The first salting will take about 400 gr. Cover the salting container with a lid. Put a weight of about 1.5 kg on top. Leave to salt for 2 weeks.

Drain the juice that has formed from the container.Thus, the bitterness contained in the shoots goes away. Add another 100 grams of salt to the mass with the fern, mixing the contents well.

Cook brine for salting. Pour water into a saucepan, pour 125 grams of salt and boil.

Arrange the fern in sterilized jars. Add the cooked brine to the jars and close the lids tightly or roll up. Store in a cool, dark place.

With this method of salting, the fern can be stored all winter. If the finished eaglet seems excessively salty, it should be soaked in water before serving. It is best to serve salted fern with dishes of stewed beef, rice, fish and seafood, add to salads and soups.

Bon appetit!