Nettle Soup

After a long winter, the first wild greens of the spring are most welcome.  This week stinging nettles are growing, so I took the opportunity to try a soup recipe that I found in Rosemary Gladstar's; Medicinal Herbs, a Beginner's Guide.  

Nettle soup; creamy and green.

It may seem strange to eat nettles when our most vivid experience with the plant is the painful "bee sting-like" welt you get when you accidentally brush up against a patch, but nettles are a nutritional powerhouse and considered a tonic herb. 

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I noticed a sign in the produce section of the co-op this week.  It said, "Stinging Nettles $1.99, Wisconsin.  So apparently this weedy edible is rising in popularity!  

Nettles are medicine and they are also food.  Like Hippocrates said, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

So let's take this Greek physician's advice and make some soup!

Ingredients

1 TBS heat stable oil (I use ghee, coconut oil, or lard from pastured pigs)
1 large onion
3 medium potatoes
2 quarts broth (bone broth, chicken, or vegetable broth)
Several large handfuls of nettle leaves
4 TBS Stock Powder (or more) optional - but yummy
Salt and pepper to taste

I added a few wild leeks leaves that I found while foraging.

Peel then dice the onion and saute in oil until translucent.

Onions are easy to grow in a zone 4 garden. If you plant a storage variety and store them in a dark low humidity room that is about 40 degrees, they can last until April.

Onions; cooked until translucent.

Add broth and diced potatoes, bring to a boil and cook about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are almost tender.  Learn how to make your own bone broth by clicking here.

Conventionally grown potatoes are one of the Environment Working Group's dirty dozen (produce high in residual pesticides and herbicides).  Add potatoes to your organic garden and reap the benefits of clean food.  Potatoes can be stored from fall to spring in cool temperatures (around 40 degrees) with high humidity.  A root cellar is ideal for potato storage.

Add in the nettles and and cook another 20 minutes or so until the nettles and potatoes are both cooked through.

Nettles grow wild and can be found in the woods and in fields.  Once established these perennial plants remain in the same place for years.  Find a spot and visit it each spring to harvest nature's bounty.

Nettles in the soup pot.

Puree with an immersion blender until soup is creamy and the consistency you like.

Serve warm and enjoy.

Tips

• Use gloves to protect your hands while harvesting nettles.  If you want to brave picking them bare handed, gently grasp the edge of a leaf and cut off the upper inch or so the of plant.

• If you do get stung, pick a dandelion leaf or flower and apply the milky white "sap" to your sting.  In a few moments the pain will be gone.  Jewel weed, which grows later in the summer can also be used to treat the sting.

• The best way to clean nettles is to place them in a big bowl of water, squish them around, then lift them out of the water with tongs.  The sand and debris will stay in the water.  Dump out the water, and repeat.  If you rinse your batch of greens this way three times, they are usually sand free. A salad spinner works great to remove the excess rinse water.

• Only use nettles in the spring.  Once nettles have blossomed, they are no longer healthy to consume.

• If you are harvesting wild greens in an a deer tick infested area, consider Stephen Harrod Buhner's advice in his book, Healing Lyme and take a daily dose of astragalus all year long to boost your immune system.

• Extra nettles can be blended into smoothies or used to make nettle tea.