Allow me, please, to open with a small rant -
You'd think I would be pleased to hear that stinging nettles are now commercially available at farmers' markets and even some 'foodie' outlets and yeah, it is 'great', in a way.
But deep down, I'm kinda saddened to hear it.
Here's why: The true nourishment of nettles, their Medicine, their meaning in the grander scheme of things, is to be found in the gathering.
It's in the hunt.
It's in the way the heartbeat quickens just a little when we discern just the right shade of green (with a blush of red or purple when they're really young) nestled amongst the golds and browns of the old grasses of last year. It's in the pink cheeks from the biting wind and spitting rain of a spring day, and the squelch of the still wet ground we likely have to cross to get to where nettles are wont to be the most plentiful. The best nettles, in my neck of the woods at least, always seem to be the least accessible ones.
It's in the first stings that bring cold benumbed fingers back to fiery life.
It's in their wildness, their downright orneriness. That orneriness is matched by our own as we're so willing, eager even, to set comfort aside just for a taste of something so genuinely fresh after a winter of imported food.
That's nettles.
But nettles aren't (alas) that for everyone, for some they're just a novel - and very, very nutritious -vegetable that can be a little daunting to deal with in the kitchen. It's not yet nettle season where I live - it's a good month away yet - but I've already heard from folks in warmer climes that they've got themselves a bag or two from the market and they don't quite know how to deal with them. Can I help? Sure, I'll be glad to.
Now that my little rant is (mostly, but I'm not guaranteeing completely) out of the way, read on for how I've learned to prep and cook nettles.
First, you have to clean them.
Do this as soon as you get them home; they'll last longer. If you're not going to eat them that day, just put them in a loosely closed bag after they've been cleaned, and they'll last a week (or more) in the crisper drawer of your fridge. They might even grow a little, especially if they're just a teeny bit damp when stored.
Like every other leafy green, your best method for cleaning is to fill a basin or a very large bowl with cold water, dump them in and let them have a good soak. Give them a swirl once in a while - I use tongs for that, and so should you, because nettles sting MORE when they're wet. Lift them out with the tongs to drain them, don't pour them out into the colander or the grit will just get back onto the leaves. Do the soak three times, changing the water each time, or until there's no more grit (or critters) showing up in the bottom of the basin or floating to the top of the water.
Next - again with tongs - inspect and sort them.
At this point in the prep, you've probably already been stung, or you're about to be, because you're not using gloves, are you? Please don't use gloves, gloves are for wussies. As it is unlikely that you'll have any plantain leaves handy, reach for the baking soda. In fact, maybe have the baking soda handy from the start, ha! Make a small amount of paste with some water, and use that to take out the stings. I hear that trick works quite well but honestly I've never tried it. I find the stings so amusing and exhilarating I just put up with them. And swear of course. Quite creatively. Because yeah, nettle stings kinda hurt. But they're not fatal, so you may as well live dangerously. Because if you ask me, if you can't handle the sting of a nettle, if you're that delicate .. then you really need to ask yourself when you became such a snowflake ..
For eating, we want the top two or three sets of leaves. Use scissors to snip them off, with or without stems included (I like stems, but you might not) and set lower, tougher leaves and stems to one side, but don't throw them out. (I'll tell you what to do with them below.)
Now, in spite what you may have read, nettles are not a quick stir-fry type of vegetable. They really need to be cooked in liquid, water or broth. This is both a matter of texture and flavour. You can precook them and then add them at the last minute to a stir fry or use them - as I see so often said on foodie sites - "any way you'd use spinach". Just know that while the dark green flavour may be comparable to spinach, that's where the similarities end. Nettles are tough and almost woolly in texture, unlike any other vegetable I can think of. As you and any family members are getting used to nettles, it is really best practice to cook them to the melt-in-your-mouth stage as you get used to this new, odd food.
Save the cooking water! Use it in soup, to cook rice in or just drink it. There's a lot of nutrition there.
To really get the most nettle-y of nettle experiences, just boil and eat a pile of them. Slather them with butter, maybe some garlic and salt and pepper. But they're also wonderful in any soup, as a layer in a lasagne or in any sort of casserole. I really like them snuck into a shepherd's pie.
You may notice a rush after eating nettles. Maybe not right away, it might come the next day. It might be pronounced - "wow, I feel amazing today!" - or you might just look back and think "wow, did I ever get a lot done today!". You may also pee a lot. And you may also have a (spectacularly) good bathroom event (just sayin'), not because they're laxative, per se, but because they do great things for the microbiome. If you eat nettles every day or so during their short season, your health will improve generally and the improvements will be long lasting. Nettles are good for us in ways we can really feel.
If, by chance, nettles make you feel a little testy or prickly of personality, take that as a good thing too. Nettles help us with boundaries, and we all need boundaries. If someone you've fed nettles to gets that way, don't fight with them. Ask yourself if perhaps they need some space or independence that you haven't been giving them. They need boundaries too.
Those boundaries include knowing when you've had enough. I eat nettles in springtime til I'm almost turning green, then one day I just stop. I just know when I've had enough. My husband has usually had his fill before I have. Never force nettles on someone who doesn't want them, and don't give too much to young children or sensitive people. Experiment on yourself by all means, but not on others.
Boundaries.
Those tougher parts of the nettles that you didn't cook? Cut them up, but not too fine, fill a jar 3/4 of the way and pour apple cider vinegar over them. Let that sit for a week or two or several, the longer the better, and use it in your salad dressings or pour as-is over vegetables or brown rice. Wonderful stuff, nettle vinegar, and not just in the kitchen - if you want gorgeous bouncy hair and a trouble free scalp, pour a sploosh of that into a basin or sink of luke warm water, then soak your hair in it after washing with shampoo. You'll find, if you can do this regularly, your hair will grow faster and thicker, and as it makes contact with your hands, the health of your finger nails will improve as well. And it's so damn refreshing!
Even more effective, if you can get your paws on some roots, is to make a vinegar or tincture with those and rub a few drops into your scalp every morning for a while. Your hair will be gorgeous and your mind sharp.
Because I have access to free-range nettles
and so do you, you just don't know it yet
I end up making large batches of nettle vinegar, enough that I can use it in the bath, too, great for the skin. A nettle bath is not for night time, however. It will wake you right up!
Nettle season - for those of us who hunt them ourselves rather than taking the easy way out by buying them
sorry if that sounded snide, but it's true; nettles lurk in far more places than you might think, you just have to learn how to look
is such a thrill because the window for the early, tender-enough-for-eating nettles is so short, but the window for nettles for vinegars is much longer.
And of course if your nettles are good enough for cooking, they're good enough for drying. If you're buying them, buy LOTS. To dry them, don't wash them first, just give them a little shake, then hang them in loose bunches in some shady corner of your house, checking them every day until they crackle and crumble when crushed. The bugs and grit will have fallen off by the time they're ready. Then, keeping them as whole as possible, store them away for future teas or infusions or baths.
Nettles freeze well. You don't have to blanch them first as you would with other vegetables. I use the ice cube tray trick, like one would use with basil - just fill the tray with chopped nettles (or a larger freezer safe container) and cover them with water, then freeze. I've found nettles in the bottom of my chest freezer that were years old and they were great in soup. Believe me, some nettles in a winter soup is a wonderful thing.
To tincture nettle tops, just snip them into a jar, cover with vodka and set them aside for 6 weeks or so. But really, nettle leaf tincture is the least effective way of using them. Nettles are powerhouses of nutrition, and although they have some medicinal qualities that will be imparted into the vodka, they're best used as food, teas/infusions and vinegars.
Another good reason to buy LOTS of nettles is that you can try getting them to root so you can start your own patch. Sometimes - in fact often - just putting a few sprigs in a cup of water for a couple of weeks is all you need to do. Once they have decent roots, tuck them into an out of the way spot in your yard in semi shade, preferably where the soil is fairly moist and if possible, nitrogen rich. Your best bet is to put a few rooted cuttings in different places throughout your yard (or you could do some guerrilla gardening and sneakily plant them someplace wild, like along a bike path ..). Where ever they are happiest is where they will 'take'. They might disappear that year and reappear - possibly quite far away - the next year or the year after. Nettles have an uncanny ability to travel, underground, then come up possibly precisely where you don't want them.
Because they have a mind of their own.
And that's why we love them.
That makes them a bit of a mixed blessing to grow. Untrainable, ornery, even garden grown nettles are wild. But they enhance the growth of other plants, enrich the soil, make a great addition to the compost heap, can be made into a 'tea' type fertilizer for tomatoes .. their uses are legion. And if you grow your own, then some spring day in the future, long before they show up in the farmer's market you can
hunt them yourself
in your own back yard.
And that ain't too shabby a way to live.
Below is a very good video. Listen carefully to the lady harvesting at the beginning, she knows her stuff. (And you may notice, all these nettle people have really healthy hair, ha!) This video is from Paul Wheaton of permaculture fame. The forums at "permies" as they call themselves, are an excellent resource that those of you who want to garden by working with (rather than dominating) the land will want to check out. That forum is here.
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