Nettles: eating them up!
I picked lots of nettles the other day, brought them home, and boiled them. The tasting team then assembled. One of us liked the nettles quite a lot. One of us said yuck! And one of us (the dog) said people, this is not food. The human who didn’t like the nettles admits that nettles are yummy when they replace spinach in spanakopita, so maybe they just need some spices.
If I’d been an organized forager, I would have had a recipe in mind when I brought the nettles home. But alas, not organized. This is what happens when I don’t get enough coffee in the morning. So I boiled all the nettles for a few minutes, then dried them in our food dehydrator, and now they’re crinkly little bits like some Japanese seaweed product. (I bet somebody could sell dried nettles at the Gabriola Farmers Market.) When dehydrated, a vast amount of nettles (enough to fill a sleeping-bag stuff sack) shrinks down to fit in a 14-ounce jar.
I’m going nettle-picking again today, and this time I think I’ll try making Cream of Nettle Soup. Nettle wine sounds like a fun thing to try, too, don’t you think? Both recipes are here.
Filed in food,Gabriola Island,native plants 2 Comments so far
2 Responses to “Nettles: eating them up!”
Joelle on 26 Mar 2009 at 10:12 am #
I just heard at the cheese workshop last night that nettles are a natural coagulator and you can add them to the milk to do the job of veggie rennet. No one knew how many it would take though and I guess you’d either have to fish them out or have nettle cheese!
Gabriolan on 27 Mar 2009 at 7:37 pm #
Thank you, Joelle!
If I wind up with nettle cheese, maybe I’ll hold ‘nettle cheese’ workshops, or make a rennet substitute out of nettle leaves. ;-) I appreciate the heads-up.