This blog post is for anyone else who has recently crunched into the shell of a snail that snuck into their kale. I appreciate that there are some folk who think that eating insects is the way forwards, but for me, snails, beetles and slugs are a no-go when it comes to dinner time.
I have been lazy recently, throwing a quick glance at a handful of leaves before I chop and cook them. It all backfired when something went crunch and I pulled half a snail out of my mouth and promptly spat the rest out too. I vowed immediately that I would go back to washing my winter leaves in vinegar before cooking. It’s probably a bit of an overreaction, but I thought I would share the technique anyway….
If you add a splash of vinegar (any will do – white wine vinegar, cider vinegar etc) to a bowl of luke warm water, and then plunge the leaves into the bowl for a few minutes, any slugs and snails should float off the leaves quite quickly. You can then cook the leaves confident that there will be no unexpected surprises.
Or, you can just pick through the leaves carefully and hope you don’t miss anything. I might actually do a bit of both, picking through the leaves and then doing a vinegar soak to be doubly sure, just until I have recovered from my mouthful of snail.