Nettle greens.
Do's and don'ts when picking nettle greens.
Picking nettle greens
People make several mistakes when picking nettles (Urtica dioica):
Boiling nettle greens
For food, I pick nettles that are 25-30 cm tall (about 1'), or, if they're beyond that but not yet in flower, the top 2-4 pairs of leaves. Once home, I either boil, chop up and freeze - or I boil, chop up and use right away.
Dump your basketful of nettles into a sink full of cold water (with a little salt) and leave them there for 10 minutes to give all the creepy-crawlies a chance to leave. They will. This is an essential step: it's not all that nice to find boiled larvae in your stew later on.
Put a big kettle on the stove, fill halfway with water, add a handful or two of nettles (use gloves). After 2-3 minutes in boiling water the stems turn bright green while the leaves turn dark green.
Properly boiled nettles don't sting. If you load too much nettle into the boiling water it's likely that not everything will get thoroughly boiled, which means that you'll have boiled nettles that still sting. You don't want that, so don't overload the boiling water.
Use a large spoon to fish the nettles out of the water and dump them onto a cutting board, preferably all pointing in the same direction. Add more nettles to the boiling water, let boil for a short while, dump onto the same cutting board. Repeat until all nettles are done.
Let the nettles on cutting board cool off enough to handle; then, slice them up into 1/2-1 cm slices across the stems. The leaves will get fairly small, which is good. You can, if you so wish, discard the largest stems as you clear the leaves off them (from the tops on down) in your slicing.
Take a handful or two of freshly sliced-up nettles and add to potatoes, rice, soups, etc.; put the rest into small (2-3 dl) freezing jars and freeze for later use.
You get young nettles all summer long if you cut your nettle patch every few weeks. 2-3 weeks after cutting the nettles are ready for another harvest. The few nettles that avoided cutting the previous time are large and bushy, and will sting, so use long sleeves when going for your young nettles later on.
A large basketful of fresh nettles will give you about 2 l boiled chopped-up nettles.
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Related entries: Nettle tea - Old nettles - Picking nettle seed - Celeriac nettle soup
Hmmm. Usually, nettles are
Hmmm. Usually, nettles are well-liked by pretty much anybody who tries them. Tastes differ, of course, but are you sure you got nettles? There's a lot of look-alikes, some of which might taste bad ... in other words, did you try the sting before you picked them? Thanks!
Hmm.
Tastes differ, I expect.
Cool! Nettles are easy, and
Cool! Nettles are easy, and yep, tasty. To me, at least.
:-) Good point!
:-) Good point!
Nettle yarn
Mature nettles have a great fiber in their stem; such stem fibers are called bast fibers. If you happen to have some old nettles that escape your horse or teapot, maybe some dead aerial parts from last year, break the main stem between your hands and you'll see fibers that don't want to break, or end up as wisps beyond the broken pieces. Similar bast fibers are found in flax and milkweed. In young tender nettles, the fiber is weak still. There's a process called retting by which you soak/rot the the green and outer parts away to allow these fibers to be freed, and then there are further processes for combing and bleaching, or you can dive in and spin them straight. I've never bothered beyond twisting a few feet of cord from some of last years dead stalks, but the fiber's in there! If I remember correctly, ramie is a type of nettle fiber from China...
Interesting! I take it Green
Interesting! I take it Green Deane hasn't had anybody complain of kidney pain after eating elderly nettles ...
Kidney pain isn't the same as kidney stones.
(and there are three (or four) different types of kidney stones, but that's beside the point here).