Nettles

[Tom Kirk]

Hello Everyone!

I know this may sound a little bit daft but What can you use nettles for?

Round the back of the building there is a well rotted pile of horse manuer (not sure the spelling!) and there is lots of nice green nettles there that look tasty because of all the new growth these last few butifull days!

Is there any ricipies that are easy?
Or what type of meals do you put them in?

Thanks Alot!
Tom Kirk

www.axletreewell.co.uk

[MKG]

Hi Tom - just use the search icon at the top of the page - enter nettles and sit back for about three hours worth of reading about nettle beer, nettle pasta, just nettles, you name it.

[Shirley]

It's the festival of nettles this weekend at The Crannog Centre in Perth - possibly a bit too far for you to travel though.

[red]

I've been experimenting with nettles recently.. so far have discovered it makes nice nettle beer, nettle soup and nettle pasta

I did not like nettle tea.

lots of other uses

[ina]

Nettle and mint tea is quite nice, I find. And of course nettles are useful for fertiliser...

[benner]

Hi,

Was at a friend's place a few weeks back and she made this dip from spinach, I've been wanting to try it with nettles and reckon it would work quite well. We just dipped fresh bread in it but i guess you could use it as a pasta sauce, or instead of cheese sauce.

1 onion
2 cloves garlic
As much spinach or nettle leaves as will fit in your pan... use a large pan!
a little water to steam the leaves
lots of cheese, I used a load of stilton and a bit of cheddar
black pepper

finely chop the onion and garlic and sweat it off in a little butter (you'll need butter too) when that's suitably cooked add the spinach/ nettles and a splash of water to steam(Lid on). When the leaves are well wilted you'll need to puree the lot and put back into the pan to keep warm and melt the cheese, add the pepper, I did't put salt in because the cheese is quite salty.

It is rather moreish and also very good with bread for soaking up purposes!

[MrsD'ville]

Sounds wonderful and what a fantastic use for the most prolific plant on our land!

Can someone answer an embarrassingly basic nettle question for me please? Is it just the tips you use? If so, do you nip off the first inch or so, or more? And must they be new and young? And how do you tell the difference?! That's the thing that's always held me back from using nettles after a disastrous nettle soup incident! I think the ones I used were a bit old.

Thanks.

[red]

yes first couple of leaves. older nettles will be trying to flower now.. newer ones tend to be shorter!

[benner]

I read, somewhere, that from about June, the leaves tend to get a crystal build up which gives them a gritty texture. I do remember boiling them up in an old baked bean tin as a kid in the summer hols, I thought it might have been because we didn't wash them but we did tend to pick any sized leaves.