Nettle recipes- Food from the wild.

Ephemera

I love nettles, they taste a bit like peas and scrambled eggs! (to me)

There are loads of wild foods out there...shepherd's purse, hairy bittercress, dandelion root and leaves, to name a very few!! ...along with the more obvious brambles and other wild fruit. One of my personal favourites is comfrey leaves, I put them, torn, into an omelette, or alternatively fry them in a batter for comfrey fritters. Elderflowers make a fab early summer wine, or you can fry the flowers to make fritters too. Our native lime trees are useful too...the leaves are a tasty salad and the flowers make a lovely tea.

As for anything like this though, make sure you can positively identify a plant before eating it, and if you are unsure, don't eat it! There are many plants that look very like edible ones, and although most just taste awful, there are a few poisonous ones in there too. So get a good identification guide, or a tame expert!

Happy hunting,

Eph xx

Ephemera

Oh, and a caveat with nettles...

Only eat young plants, or the leaves that come up after you have cut the plants down. Older leaves, especially those in early Summer, have a grainy texture and may be laxative in some people.....

Pink.

Hi pennypinchingmum,

That looks yummy! I'll add it to the nettle thread later as it helps to keep all the recipes together.

These other threads might interest you too:

Free wild food ideas?

Dandelion Honey & other wild food recipes

What can be eaten from wild now?

Foraging - Natures Food

Free Food Challenge

Cheap food if you aren't squeamish

It's also worth checking out the Foraging forum on www.downsizer.net

Pink

otterspasm

In our village yesterday we had the Dock Pudding World Championship. Dock Pudding is a mixture of dock leaves, nettles, onion and oatmeal fried up in a little oil. Usually served for breakfast with bacon and egg. I tried it for the first time and it was yummy! A bit like spinach. I don't know quantities though so would need to experiment a bit if I wanted to make it myself.

HariboJunkie

I was just thinking about nettle soup this morning. I grew up being embarrassed by my mother foraging for nettles with her marigolds on but now think nothing of doing the same to my children.

We're going to try to get some this weekend. Nettle soup is absolutely delicious. :drool:

Austin_Allegro

Yesterday I cooked some nettles for the first time. Had been meaning to for ages but was always slightly worried I'd get a stung mouth!

Anyway, I needn't have worried. I picked about half a washing up bowlful of young nettle tops, and boiled them for 25 minutes. I then mixed them with creamed tomatoes, pasta and sunflower seeds, and some garlic.

They were delicious! Very similar to spinach but without the horrible feeling on your teeth.

mary43

Must pass that on to OH...........he's head of kitchen dept............lol
Moaning like mad he was pulling nettles up the other day and getting stung.

Angelina-M

I use nettles in soapmaking, facial toners, allsorts of beauty things but I just darent eat them!

I've read how nutritional they are for us its just..... well I don't like how they are always covered in spiders, sorry, wuss alert :rolleyes:

I may try them this year, maybe in a soup?

balmaiden

We eat nettles regularly either steamed as a veg, or as a soup. I can confirm that they are delicious.Give them a go guys you don't know what you are missing.

MrsTinks

And if you are worried about getting stung whilst picking then have a pair of rubber gloves in your pocket for picking and stick to only taking the top shoots