Bouillon Brèdes: The Mauritian Leafy Greens Broth Recipe

Bouillon brèdes is a light Mauritian broth of leafy greens, served alongside rice. You fry onion, garlic and ginger in a little oil, add water, then drop in the greens for just a few minutes so they stay green. The base recipe below uses 3 to 4 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of oil and one bunch of each type of brèdes.

What is bouillon brèdes?

Brèdes is the Mauritian word for the edible leaves sold in bunches at the market. They are boiled, stir-fried, fricasseed or steamed in their own juices, and usually go with rice dishes. The broth is the simplest way to cook them: a little flavoured liquid, the leaves and salt. Our guide to Mauritian cuisine calls it a light soup, and our sausage rougaille recipe puts it on the table for Sunday lunch.

The published recipes say nothing about where the dish comes from, so we don’t claim anything either.

The base recipe

It follows a Mauritian recipe blog, the only one that gives quantities for the aromatics and the oil along with the full method.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of Chinese brèdes
• 1 bunch of malbar brèdes
• 1 bunch of mouroum brèdes
• 1 teaspoon of crushed ginger
• 1 teaspoon of crushed garlic
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 3 to 4 cups of water
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Wash the greens and cut them into pieces about 5 cm long.
2. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil in a saucepan, stirring until the onion turns translucent.
3. Pour in the water and bring it to the boil.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Add the greens and cook for a few minutes. Don’t overcook them: they should stay green.

The recipe doesn’t say how much a bunch weighs, and it gives no cooking time beyond “a few minutes”. As a rough guide, another recipe uses 300 g of greens for 1 litre of broth and 4 people, compared below.

Which brèdes to use

You can make the broth with one kind of leaf or a mix, as in the base recipe. An Expat.com article describes the ones you will see most often:

• mouroum, which is moringa: very nutritious, with a slightly bitter taste;
• songe, with large dark green leaves and a mild, almost sweet flavour;
• chouchou, with a fleshy texture;
• tom pouce, which is bok choy, with an Asian-style flavour;
• pet sai, a Chinese cabbage with white and pale green leaves, not to be mistaken for tom pouce;
• cresson (watercress), which you can also eat raw in a salad.

The same page pairs songe with roti and dholl puri, chouchou with curries and rougailles, and tom pouce with chop suey, mine and bol renversé. For a broth, none of the pages names a required variety: choose what you can find and how much bitterness you like.

Where the recipes differ

Three pages describe a brèdes broth, each with a different liquid and different flavourings.

The express recipe serves 4 in 25 minutes and is eaten straight away, while the leaves are still bright green and crisp. The mouroum page gives no quantity or time: it only says that the small leaves have to be separated from the stems, that you need a good amount of them for the broth to have flavour, and that the traditional broth is made with a fish head.

All three agree on one thing: the leaves cook briefly. It is also the only tip the base recipe gives.

Serving bouillon brèdes

It goes with a plate of white rice. The Mauritian recipe blog suggests it with a fish vindaye, a salted fish rougail or an octopus curry such as our Rodrigues octopus curry recipe. The express recipe also serves it next to a curry, for instance our Mauritian chicken curry, or as a light starter.

None of the pages gives a storage time, and the express recipe says to serve it right away, so cook only what you plan to eat.

Sources and checks

• Bonnes recettes de l’Île Maurice (blog): bouillon de brèdes
• Recette Île Maurice: express brèdes broth
• Mautourco: mouroum brèdes broth
• Expat.com: brèdes, exhibition at the Blue Penny Museum