Warabi (bracken shoot) ✦

Crosse de fougère-aigle (warabi)

What it is

Bracken is one of the few vegetables that has to be disarmed before it can be eaten: Japanese kitchens have doused the shoots in wood-ash lye or baking soda for centuries, a treatment called aku-nuki. The same plant’s rhizome yields warabi-ko, the grey starch behind warabi-mochi, at a rate of roughly seventy grams of powder per ten kilos of root.

In the kitchen

Lay the shoots in a tray, dust with baking soda — about a teaspoon per litre — cover with water just off the boil and leave overnight; never boil them or they collapse into threads. Rinse well in the morning and the texture turns silky rather than slimy.

Goes with

Katsuobushi (dried bonito) Koikuchi shoyu Hon-mirin Sesame Sodium bicarbonate Rice

Same species

Warabi-ko (bracken starch)

In season alongside

Broccoli Broad bean Molokhia Red amaranth leaf Spinach Swiss chard

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us