Everyone knows such a plant as a fern, which is very common in the forests of our country, but not everyone knows that this plant can be used in cooking. First of all, we are talking about a fern called bracken, a distinctive feature of which are feather-like leaves that form a triangle. In the Far East, as well as in China, Japan, Korea and New Zealand, this type of fern is widely eaten - it is used in salads, fried, baked, salted and marinated. In Russia, there are not so many admirers of fern dishes, and it’s completely in vain, since this plant has a mass useful properties for the body, so "Culinary Eden" decided to tell you how to cook fern.
Bracken fern is rich in vitamins A, B2, B3 and C, as well as copper, manganese, iron, magnesium and potassium. The plant helps to strengthen the immune system, normalize cholesterol levels, improve digestion, relieve stress and eliminate inflammatory reactions. Japanese scientists also proved that bracken is able to remove radionuclides from the body. In terms of protein content, bracken fern can be equated to cereal crops, therefore, when proper preparation it is easily absorbed by the body. It’s worth mentioning right away that only young, not yet unfolded fern shoots resembling snails are used in cooking. They are rich in nutrients and trace elements, while the adult fern is unsuitable for food, being bitter and poisonous.
The collected young shoots of bracken should be cleaned of unblown leaves and placed for a day in a container with slightly salted water, which needs to be changed several times. This is necessary in order to remove the inherent bitter taste from the plant. After soaking, the fern must be stewed in boiling water for 2-3 minutes - then you can proceed directly to cooking. If you are limited in time, the fern can be boiled without soaking in 2-3 doses, each time changing the water. At the same time, it is important to bring the salted water to a boil and immediately throw the fern into a colander so that the plant does not boil soft and does not turn into an unattractive-looking porridge. Store collected fern shoots should be no more than two days. In no case do not use bracken fern in its raw form - it must pass heat treatment otherwise you may get poisoned.
In addition to its high nutritional value, the main advantage of the fern is that its shoots have a characteristic mushroom flavor. In this regard, you can cook similar dishes from fern as from mushrooms. Bracken can be added to soups, salads and casseroles, used as a filling for pies, pancakes and dumplings, made into snacks, as well as stewed, fried and served as a side dish for meat and fish dishes. If crushed in a blender, bracken can be a great addition to sauces or gravies. In addition, the fern can be dried, salted or pickled for long-term storage. The recipes below will show you how to cook fern so that it turns out delicious and pleases everyone around the table.
Fern fried with vegetables
Ingredients:
700-800 g bracken fern,
2 carrots
2 bulbs
3 garlic cloves,
creamy or vegetable oil for frying,
salt to taste.
Cooking:
Cut the prepared fern into pieces about 5 cm long. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the onion cut into half rings. Fry for about 2 minutes, then add the grated carrots and fry for 10 minutes. Put the fern and chopped garlic into the pan, cover and simmer for about 7-10 minutes, until the fern acquires the desired consistency.
Pork stew with ferns
Ingredients:
600-700 g bracken fern,
500 g pork
1 onion
1 carrot
1 bell pepper
150 ml soy sauce
4 garlic cloves,
vegetable oil,
spices to taste.
Cooking:
Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan and put the pork cut into small pieces. Fry for a few minutes, then add the chopped vegetables and fry for about 7 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour in 2/3 of the soy sauce and simmer, covered, over low heat until tender, about 20-25 minutes. If the liquid has evaporated, add some water. Put the prepared fern into the pan, cut into pieces 4-5 cm long, chopped garlic and spices to taste. Pour in the remaining soy sauce. Simmer for about 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Due to the use of soy sauce in this dish, salt is not required.
Fern in Korean
Ingredients:
400 g bracken fern,
1 onion
4 tablespoons of vegetable oil,
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Korean carrot seasoning
3-4 garlic cloves (or more to taste)
dried or fresh chili peppers to taste.
Cooking:
Cut the prepared fern into pieces 3 to 5 cm long. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan and add the chopped onion. Fry until golden brown, then add the fern along with soy sauce, seasoning, pressed garlic and chili pepper (dried or chopped). Mix well and simmer for no more than 2-3 minutes. Keep an eye on the time to keep the fern crispy. The cooled dish can be served as an appetizer or as a salad.
Fern in batter
Ingredients:
500 g bracken fern,
1 egg
3-4 tablespoons flour
3-4 tablespoons of milk
vegetable oil,
salt and black ground pepper taste.
Cooking:
Cut the heat-treated fern into long pieces. Prepare the batter by beating the egg with milk and flour. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the pieces of fern, after dipping them in batter, until golden brown.
Pickled fern
Ingredients:
1 kg fern,
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of salt
1 head of garlic
100 ml vegetable oil,
1 teaspoon dried chili pepper.
Cooking:
Cut the prepared fern into pieces 3-5 cm long and put in a saucepan. Prepare a marinade from soy sauce, vinegar, salt and sugar. Pour the fern with the resulting marinade and mix well. Pass the garlic through a press and put on top of the shoots in a saucepan. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan, add chili pepper and stir. Cook for about 1 minute, then pour oil on the fern shoots and mix thoroughly. Place in the refrigerator to marinate for several hours.
Fern filling (for pies and pancakes)
And
ingredients:
600-700 g of fern,
1 large onion
100 ml milk or sour cream,
2 tablespoons flour
vegetable oil,
salt to taste.
Cooking:
Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion for 2-3 minutes. Add fern cut into small pieces (pre-boiled) and fry for about 5 minutes. Mix everything with flour and add milk (or sour cream). Stir again, salt to taste and bring to a boil to thicken the filling.
Knowing how to cook a fern, you will always have a lot of useful diet meals that will help diversify the diet and please loved ones with unusual culinary masterpieces. Bon appetit!
In May, in the Northern regions of our country, the bracken fern collection season begins. The only pity is that few people pay attention to this healthy, nutritious and tasty plant.
It is customary for us to go to the forest only for mushrooms, and well-known berries. But the bracken fern, in its characteristics, is not inferior to other well-known gifts of nature. It is not for nothing that it is supplied in large quantities to Japan from the Far East, where gourmet restaurant dishes are prepared from this wild plant.
In the forests near our dacha in the Leningrad region, bracken grows in large quantities. And my daughter and I, lovers of forest cooking and unusual recipes from wild plants, we cannot pass by such wealth. We collect, try to cook, and willingly share with you the result. Our favorite recipe
Fried bracken fern with potatoes
This plant has one strange feature that we don't quite understand. It is bitter, but only for some people. For example, I can’t eat it if I don’t boil it in salt water first or if I don’t hold it for a couple of days in a saline solution. The husband eats it freely raw, even without cooking, picking off young shoots. He loves the taste. He says he doesn't feel any bitterness. And he does not like those dishes where I pre-treat the fern with salt.
Therefore, I roast the fern separately for myself and the children, separately for my husband. Soaked or pre-boiled for us, raw for him. I advise you to taste the bracken first. If you find it bitter, then follow our recommendations. If you can eat it raw, then save the vitamins and fry immediately without pre-treatment.
Bracken fern has a slightly mushroom flavor, so it goes well with. When preparing it, you should not use any spices other than pepper, as in mushroom dishes.
Collection and pre-treatment of ferns
Collect young sprouts until they stretch upwards higher than 20 cm. Older plants become stiff and bitter in them. Leaves should not be open. Everything is shown in the photo. You can collect it by hand - the stems easily break off almost at the very ground.
Then you need to wash the harvested crop well. Wash each shoot so as to get rid of the hairs covering the plant. It is enough just to run your hand over the wet stem so that the villi are removed and the stems become smooth. This is the longest and most tedious, but necessary process.
If your fern is not bitter, then put it on a clean towel and dry it.
In order to get rid of bitterness, bracken must first be boiled.
For the meal we need
- potatoes - 1.5 kg (boiled in uniform),
- fern - 0.5 kg,
- gout - 100-200 gr,
- onion - 1 piece,
- salt 3 tbsp (to get rid of bitterness),
- vegetable oil for frying,
- pepper to taste.
You don’t have to take a slug, but I like it with her - she won’t spoil the fern and add goodness to the dish. Moreover, these two wild plants are harvested at the same time in May - both are tasty while young.
Getting rid of bitterness
You can skip this step if you don't have bitter plants.
We cut the fern shoots about 5 cm long. Put them in a saucepan, add a tablespoon of salt without a slide, pour hot boiling water (about 300-400 ml), bring to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes. Throw it in a colander and rinse well. Be sure to test the result after each cooking. If the bracken stopped bitter after the first treatment, then proceed to the next step. Otherwise, add another spoonful of salt, fill with water and boil again.
Another way to get rid of bitterness is to soak the washed sprouts for a day in a saline solution. For a couple of glasses of water 1 tbsp. l. salt. Change the solution 3-4 times, rinsing the fern each time.
Cooking
Important! Do not salt the potatoes when cooking, if you processed the fern with salt. Salt in the dish will be enough.
Rinse well and dry. For frying, it must be completely dry. Cut it into about 1 cm.
Peel the boiled potatoes and cut them for frying as you like.
Cut the onion into small cubes and fry in a pan in vegetable oil over medium heat.
When it becomes slightly golden, add to it chopped fern shoots no longer than 5 cm. Let's mix everything well. Add pepper to taste. Fry for 3-5 minutes, then add to the pan and continue frying for another 2 minutes.
At the very end, add potatoes to the pan and mix well. Do not salt the dish if you boiled ferns with salt, otherwise you can easily oversalt. As soon as the potatoes are browned, everything will be ready.
Divide into bowls and enjoy unforgettable taste first spring forest harvest.
The bracken fern has another drawback. The harvest season is very short, just a couple of weeks. But it can be easily prepared for the winter simply by freezing after boiling in a saline solution. And then you can fry potatoes with fern at any time of the year.
Orlyak - an exquisite dish of the Far East
An exquisite dish of the Far Eastern cuisine is served not only by Far Easterners, but by well-known chefs. They talk about the incredible usefulness of the fern, that this dish is simple and tasty, and if you collect the fern yourself, it’s also cheap. By the way: for sophistication, it is the bracken that is needed, it is harvested in May-June exclusively at the stage of milky maturity, when it crawled out of the ground in the form of a snail, i.e. the leaves haven't unfolded yet.
CROWN DISH: FERN WITH MEAT
Soak the salty bracken fern in water in advance (fresh ones also need to be soaked for several hours to remove the bitterness). Taste it - it should be completely bland. Cut the fern into pieces of 4-5 cm. Cut the beef pulp into thin small slices and lightly marinate (ground black pepper, a tablespoon of any vegetable oil), soy sauce. Do not salt the meat. Chop the onion and fry it until golden brown in a preheated pan with vegetable oil. Put the onion in a separate bowl. Heat the frying pan to a high temperature and quickly fry the meat (5-10 minutes). Add the fern to the meat and fry for 5-7 minutes, the finished fern should still be slightly crunchy inside. Add fried onions. Season with soy sauce. Stir. Salt to taste if necessary. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid and let stand 5 minutes. This fern is served both hot and cold.
SALADS WITH BEACH
gourmet
100 g salted fern, 100 g krill meat (or small shrimp), 200 g potatoes, 100 g onions, 80 g butter, 100 g tomato sauce, herbs, spices. Krill meat (shrimp) lightly fry on butter or margarine, combine with browned onions. Separately, fry medium diced potatoes until half cooked and add shrimp or krill meat with onions. Salted fern must first be soaked, changing the water, for 2 hours, then boil for 12-15 minutes, cool, cut into small pieces. Connect everything, add tomato sauce and simmer until done for 15-20 minutes.
Taiga
For 400 g of fern - 120 g of onions, 100 g of carrots, 3 cloves of garlic, 5 g of salt, 15 g of sugar, 15 g of vinegar. Soak the fern in cold water, cut into small pieces, add salt, sugar, vinegar, garlic, fry onions and carrots in vegetable oil, mix with ferns. Let it brew for 1-2 hours.
Oriental
50 g fern, 50 g boiled squid, 50 g pickled cucumbers, 40 g boiled rice, green onion, parsley and mayonnaise to taste. Cut into strips and mix, put in a bowl on a plate, garnish with egg, squid and herbs.
Fern with eggs and rice
3 art. l. boiled rice, 3 tbsp. l. fried fern, 2 pickled peeled cucumbers, 1 hard-boiled egg, green onion, mayonnaise and parsley to taste. Rice, pickles, fried bracken and green onions cut, season with a part of the mayonnaise, put in a salad bowl, pour over the rest of the mayonnaise, garnish with an egg and parsley.
Orlyak with sesame and carrots
400 g fern, 1 small carrot, 1 small onion, 2 g red pepper, 2 bay leaves, a little sesame oil and soy sauce to taste. Soak the bracken for a day, boil for 5 minutes, chop, fry in rast. butter with carrots, onions, red pepper, sesame and bay leaf. Then transfer everything to a salad bowl, season with soy sauce and mix.
Fern in Chinese.
400 g ferns, 110 g onions, 200 g pork, soy sauce. Cut the meat into small cubes and fry. Dip the fern in boiling water for a couple of minutes. Fry the onion until golden brown, transfer it to the meat. Cut the bracken into pieces about 5 cm, add it to the meat and pour everything with soy sauce. The dish is ready when the bracken is hot.
Fern in Korean.
For 200 g of fern - 60 g of onion, soy sauce, sesame seeds, salt. Boil the fern soaked in water for 5 minutes. Onion cut into rings, lightly fry in rast. oil, then add the fern and fry over low heat. At the end of frying, add soy sauce, sesame seeds and salt to taste. Cool, put in a salad bowl and you can serve.
Fern with sausage
200 g bracken, 100 g semi-smoked sausage, 1 fresh cucumber, onion, a little dill and parsley, 2 tbsp. l. mayonnaise, salt. Soaked bracken cut and fry on rast. oil, add chopped cucumber and sausage, put in a salad bowl, adding browned onion, salt, mayonnaise, garnish with herbs.
Just with an egg
200 g of fern, 2 eggs, 1 onion, mayonnaise. Boil bracken in salted water, cut into small pieces, onion - half rings, finely chop hard-boiled eggs, mix everything, season with mayonnaise.
SOUPS
Rice with fern
180 g of salted fern, 60 g of rice, 1 onion, a little cooking oil, garlic and herbs, 1 liter of broth. Bring the broth to a boil, put the washed rice and cook until tender. 5 minutes before the readiness, add the fried fern, browned onions and spices. AT ready soup put crushed garlic and sprinkle with herbs.
With potatoes and fern
For 280 g of fern - 40 g of carrots, 150 g of potatoes, 800 g of broth or water, 50 g of sour cream, a little onion, leek, rast. oils, tomato paste, table margarine. Cut potatoes into cubes, vegetables into strips. Saute onions and carrots in fat, adding a tomato. paste. Fry the fern, put potatoes, onions and vegetables into the boiling broth, and 10 minutes before the readiness, add the fried fern, spices and salt.
With bacon and fern
400 g of ferns, 1 onion, 100 g of bacon, a little extra flour, 100 g of sour cream or cream. Fry the pieces of bacon with chopped onion, adding pieces of fern. Simmer for about half an hour, pour in meat or vegetable broth, cook for another 20 minutes. Season the soup with flour, sour cream, bring to a boil. Serve it hot.
Fern noodle soup
Per serving: 40g fern, 1/4 egg, 40g homemade noodles, 35 g wheat flour, 20 g onions, a little salt and fat. Pour flour, salt into cold water, a raw egg and mix well. Leave the dough for 10 minutes, then roll it thinly and chop, dry the noodles a little. In boiling meat broth lay out the noodles, after a couple of minutes add the fern fried with onions.
HOW TO PREPARE FERN?
1. SALT
Salt it with a lot of salt under oppression, after which it is stored in brine even when room temperature, for example, in an ordinary enameled bucket.
2. SOAK AND FREEZE
ADVICE FROM ALEXANDRA NABOKOVAYA
I soak the fern for several hours in water, rinse, then put it wet in bags. Without salt! I keep it in the freezer. It keeps well all winter.
He took out a bag - a fern in a pan, added chopped carrots, a little oil, salt - and that's it! It turns out very tasty even for this simple recipe. But everyone can add whatever they like to the fern - onions, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes ...
Edible types of ferns are very popular in the European part of Russia, as well as in China and Korea. They prepare many delicious dishes.
The fern, the recipe of which we will give in this article with potatoes and meat, most often belongs to the species of ostrich or bracken. Having tried this product once, you can safely include it in your daily menu.
Roasted fern. Recipe with meat
Take four hundred grams of good. Freshness can be determined by pressing on the meat with your finger - the dent should quickly straighten out. If you want to cook just such a fern, the recipe calls for about two hundred grams of it - this is one standard pack. In addition, you will need four tablespoons of vegetable oil, a mixture of your favorite spices (paprika, red pepper and mustard seed go well with this dish), a couple of garlic cloves and salt to taste. Remember, if you cook fern with meat in this way - the recipe is for four servings.
For the first time, you do not need to cook a large amount, because the taste of the dish is specific, and you need to get used to it. Fern, the recipe for which is given here, is easiest to prepare by buying vacuum-packed green raw stalks. This product can often be found in the Chinese food department or where they sell spices and seasonings for cooking. It is ideal for preparing this hot appetizer. Cut the beef into small oblong sticks, then beat each of them, fry in vegetable (sunflower or fern wash, cut into strips up to four centimeters long. Do not overcook the meat - after you beat it, it cooks much faster, so you need to make sure that it does not become dry and hard.It will take about five to seven minutes, after this time, put the prepared fern in the pan, add spices.
This mixture must be simmered under the lid for up to ten minutes. AT ready meal you can put crushed fresh garlic, sprinkle with herbs before serving.
Stewed with potatoes
For this hearty meal take half a kilogram of potatoes. It is advisable to choose tubers of a variety that becomes crumbly during cooking. It will take two hundred and fifty grams of salted fern, vegetable oil, fat sour cream, black pepper. Potatoes need to be cut into cubes, straws or cubes. Soak ferns in cold water twenty-four hours before you cook. After that, the product must be rinsed, squeezed, sorted, cut. The prepared fern is placed in hot oil, fried for five minutes. Add potatoes and simmer another fifteen minutes. Then you need to pour sour cream or cream into the pan (the amount depends on the desired fat content of the dish, approximately 50-100 grams) and cook for another fifteen minutes. The dish is best served hot. You can also cook fern at the same time as meat and potatoes, you can add other vegetables to the dish, for example Bell pepper, carrots, onions.
Ingredients
Fern - 150 g
Potato - 200 g
Sunflower oil - 50 ml
Onion - 30 g
dried ginger - to taste
Garlic - 1 clove
Ground paprika - to taste
Ground black pepper - to taste
Salt - to taste
- 150 kcal
- 20 minutes.
Ready meal
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Main Ingredients:
Potato
Cooking process
Fried potatoes with fern - a specific dish. Fern dishes are common in the East. Harvested fern is supplied from Siberia to China, Japan, and Korea. It is there that the chefs are fluent in the methods of its preparation.
We have a fern - not quite an ordinary product, so you need to learn how to cook it properly. Retail chains often sell fern already prepared for use, it was with this that I fried potatoes today, it is very convenient to use such a product - any dish is prepared simply and quickly.
But often the fern is sold salted, it is salted in bunches in large containers or rolled into jars (less often). Here, having bought such a salty bunch or a jar of ferns, you must first prepare it so as not to be disappointed in this tasty and useful plant. The preparation is very simple: salted fern must be soaked in cold water for 10-15 hours, changing it often, because a very steep salt is used for storage.
In the spring, you can roast fresh fern, in which case it is pre-boiled to avoid bitterness. That's all the main points - agree, everything is extremely simple! Shall we start?
Take the groceries from the list. You can take spices to your taste.
Throw the pre-soaked fern into a pan with heated sunflower oil.
Fry a little and add spices and garlic to taste. Put on a plate.
In the same pan, fry the potatoes, cut into thin circles (or as you like).
Flip over and fry potatoes until browned on the other side. It is better to do this in portions so that the potatoes remain crispy.
You can combine potatoes with ferns at the end and warm them up together. To serve, lay out the potatoes in a slide, place the fried fern on top.
Serve fern fried potatoes with fresh herbs, pickles and marinades. Believe me, it's very tasty! Bon appetit!
Useful tips and additions to the recipe
- Before frying, salted fern should be soaked in cold water for up to 15 hours, changing the type several times.
- Boil fresh fern before frying to remove bitterness.
- Don't overcook the fern - it should still be slightly crispy.
- Fern goes well with eggs, vegetables, meat. Feel free to experiment!
