Just over our back fence is a prolific jungle of stinging nettle. I have always viewed stinging nettle as a bit of a nuisance because touch it with your skin and it’s very unpleasant, leaving a stinging sensation for sometimes a day or two. However I recently discovered that the leaves of stinging nettle are super nutritious because they contain iron, and quite a lot of it too, as well as calcium, magnesium, zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6 and more. Stinging nettle also has anti-inflammatory properties and makes an effective treatment for arthritis.
I love being able to go outside and gather food without having to visit a supermarket. There’s something even more exciting about using wild food that grows without any human input and it’s somehow reassuring knowing that if we ever faced food rationing again one day, we’d still be able to eat the wild stinging nettle. Just make sure you wear gloves when you pick the leaves otherwise it will hurt.
What did we do with all those leaves? We made a stinging nettle soup based on this recipe, which looked appealing. Here’s my version:
4 cups of chopped stinging nettle leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 red onion
2 stalks celery
a bunch of chives, chopped
1/2 cup of brown rice
hemp oil (olive oil or any other oil would be fine)
1 tblsp soy sauce
2 vegetable stock cubes
5 cups water
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup of ground cashew nuts
Fry the onion and garlic until clear then add all the other ingredients (except lemon juice and cashews) and simmer for 45 minutes or until the rice is done. Add the cashews and lemon at the end. Then use a stick blender to puree it and serve.
We have lots of chives growing in our garden so we didn’t have to buy these either.
My badass look.
Ben insisted on posing for a photo. How vain is he?
So what’s the verdict?
Delicious! It was maybe a bit thick and so depending on which type of rice you use it could do with some extra water. The kids said it was, “kind of ok” which is fantastic praise for something green.
rachel.blog 
“My badass look.” love this haha!
Are you implying I don’t look very badass? I had stinging nettle as a weapon you know 😉
That looks nice. I always make my soups thick to be on the safe side, then add water if I need to. Watery soup is not so good.
I’m definitely with you on the watery soup – yuk!
I have heard of nettle soup, but never thought to make it. Looks good 🙂
It tastes a bit like spinach soup.
I’m thinking the soup looks superior to Ben in this case…lol
He is looking a bit scruffy, I agree, but it’s a requirement for his job, I believe.
The soup looks really nice. Ben looks almost as pretty as you. Hope he doesn’t mind being treated as a sex object. 🙂
Nope, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mind.
The soup sounds fantastic! I’m sure I’ve heard my Yorkshire based family talk about nettle tea & Monty Don talk about using stinging nettle as a fertiliser on the garden too. So many uses!
Yes, nettle tea – in searching for a soup recipe I found lots of articles about nettle tea. I think it was known as “poor man’s food” and so lost a bit of popularity because of that. But I couldn’t care less if poor people used to eat it, especially when it’s so nutritious, tasty, and free.
nettle tea rocks but perhaps I just see it as revenge for getting stung on overgrown footpaths
How do you make the tea? Just stick a few leaves in a cup of hot water?
I think folk have used the stems as rope as well. All mathematicians should be scruffy at the edges too – speaking as a one-time one.
I assumed that if you ate stinging nettles it would burn your insides………..there are plenty of these out at my parent’s farm, I’ll have to try it.