Boiled Hop-shoots
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Gather young hop shoots as soon as they spring from the ground.
Wash the shoots and tie them in bunches like asparagus.
Soak in salt water to remove bitterness.
Cook and serve
Boil in meat stock until tender.
Serve on slices of buttered toast with drawn butter on the side.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Young hop shoots
- Provide the main vegetable, cooked until tender and mildly bitter.
- Meat stock
- Adds savoury flavour as the shoots simmer and soften.
- Buttered toast
- Gives a crisp, absorbent base that holds the cooked shoots.
The step that matters
Soak in salt water to remove bitterness. Hop shoots contain bitter compounds that soak partly into the water, so skipping or shortening this soak leaves the finished dish harsher in flavour.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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