Recipe for nettle soup

[luzula]

I posted the recipe for nettle soup in a comment; re-posting it here in case more people want to try it! To be clear, this is for Urtica dioica (the common nettle of Eurasia, which has apparently also spread to other continents) and I cannot speak for the edibility/taste of other nettle species.

Pick the nettles during the spring, by wearing gloves and using a scissors. Just take the top, so you don't have to weed out the stringy stems later. Wash them in water, then boil them in water for perhaps five minutes. If you have more nettles than fits in your pot, boil them in several batches, in the same water. Keep the water that you boiled in for later. Chop the nettles which are now soft and don't sting. Make a soup with vegetable stock and the water that you boiled the nettles in, and add chopped nettles, some chopped fried onions, some cream, a little thickening (flour), some black pepper and salt to taste. Eat with a boiled egg if you like.

Comments

[regshoe]

Oh yes, we have Lamium album too, white dead-nettle. Also red dead-nettle, L. purpureum, which looks much less like a stinging nettle.

Hmm. When I look it up, that's a common potted plant in Sweden, but it doesn't sting, so why would it be Mind Your Own Business? We often call it "hemtrevnad".

I don't know... I'm not familiar with it, so I don't know what else about it might inspire that name. Hemtrevnad, that's a lovely name (this plant is clearly much nicer in Swedish than in English!).

[feroxargentea]

I suspect it's called mind-your-own-business because it's so invasive if it's let loose in the garden, poking its nose in everywhere(?)

Also I can confirm that Urtica dioica and Urtica urens are both very stingy, but the former is perennial so you probably know where it's going to be each year, whereas the latter is annual and therefore pops up in unexpected places amongst other plants and gets you when you're not expecting it, so it's more prone to causing swearing! Dunno why Wiki doesn't include these important details :)

[regshoe]

That would make sense!

Ah, I see—it's all about expectations. Very important details :D

[luzula]

Also I can confirm that Urtica dioica and Urtica urens are both very stingy, but the former is perennial so you probably know where it's going to be each year, whereas the latter is annual and therefore pops up in unexpected places amongst other plants and gets you when you're not expecting it, so it's more prone to causing swearing!

Ah, that makes sense! : )