Eating stinging nettles (rachel.blog)

>People think that when you become vegan you have to give up lots of food. It’s true that I stopped eating animals but the number of different species I eat has grown considerably. This is because meat-eaters tend to eat the same few species of animals over and over again – pigs, cows, chickens. Whereas there are some 20,000 species of edible plants in the world.

I was vegetarian for 10 years until around COVID. I often want to go back to vegetarianism, not for ethical or health reasons, just for the sheer diversity of what I ate and the fun of cooking with limitations.

My mom made soup from them when I grew up. They are not particularly special taste-wise but I can believe they have vitamins, like every green.

Oh yeah my polish grandmother (100 and still kicking!) cooked some. Tastes like spinach and was great.

Fun story (semi related) she visited us in the US in 2015 and my sister served her kale. She amusingly said: “I haven’t had this since ww2” apparently when food was scarce they grew kale which was easy to grow in Poland and packed with nutrients

> People think that when you become vegan you have to give up lots of food

Well, that’s kind of the point no? You do.

I think they mean people imagine you’d give up on variety of food.

Stinging nettles are often touted as free abundant superfood, but the truth is it is rather bland and boring. Yes, edible, but you would be better of grabbing some established greens from a local grocery store.

In the spring I get nettles and wild garlic and a bit later elderflower. Summer is berries (including elderberries), plums, wild cherries (not as good as they sound). Fall is wild mushrooms and sloe and monkey butt fruit and persimmons, apple, pear, etc. Winter is drinking elderflower vodka and sloe gin and eating frozen and dried stuff from the rest of the year. I'm sure I'm forgetting things.

Ate a lot of nettle soup growing up. I'd say it tastes a lot like spinach. It's also nice to put a little milk (sorry vegans)

There's a restaurant in Sarajevo which specializes in this stuff, called The Singing Nettle. Recommended.

Random fact:

You only get stung by nettles around the edge of their leaves. You can touch the middle of the leaf and you won't get stung.

In the Netherlands it's quite common to eat stinging nettle cheese. It's quite tasty. Fenugreek is another crowd favourite.

Milarepa's skin and hair supposedly turned green from living on nettles for a while while meditating in retreat.

https://buddhaweekly.com/milarepa-explains-happiness-story-n...

I've had them. They're fine. But this is overselling the variety angle. The meat eater equivalence of forage like this would be game animals. In my experience and extrapolating, the taste difference between game and farm animals is generally greater than among the green vegetables.

They make a nice tea.

There is also ‘nettle beer’, dunno if my batch failed but it was undrinkable

I grew up in Ukraine and stinging nettle soups were a popular part of our diet in the summers. It is delicious and I definitely don’t agree that it is bland. But I suspect a big part of it is what else you add to it. My suggestion is to look up “суп с крапивой” and use your favorite method of translating it to your language of choice to look at the variety of recipes.

Just make sure not to pick them from fertilized ground (like garden beds) as they may have high levels of nitrites (?).

Pick them from wild areas

Is Dock Leaf soup good?

I can testify that steamed stingy nettles with gomasio (toasted sesame seeds and salt) is very delicious.

We used to have nettle salad as a kid. IIRC if you cut them fine enough, they stop stinging or something like that. Can’t quite remember, so maybe DYOR before you make a salad ;)

I grow stinging nettles. I used to just steam them for 10 or so minutes. Then they're a normal green. Can mix with eggs, eat plain on the side, add some salt.

Pretty good stuff.

If you do grow them, make sure you situate them in a corner of the yard--no fun to get stung.

100% thought this would be about eating jellyfish (which I'm completely on board with because they've stung me upwards of a dozen times and that old Klingon proverb that says that revenge, much like jellyfish, is a dish best served cold).

Apropos of stinging plants though both of my parents are supposedly very allergic to poison ivy. I maintained an immunity to it until I was around 27-28 when it began to affect me very slightly. Now if I graze it I can get away without ill effects merely by washing the urushiol off with dish soap within a half hour or so. I've heard of gardeners and outdoorspeople eating it in small quantities to maintain their resistance to it. While I'm not particularly keen to try this there is something poetic about it.

When people mention nettles, they also mention dandelions too. Both are good sources of nutrients

My godfather’s wife made this. They were from Waloonia.

I was surprised the first time I saw her making it but it was creamy, tasty.

My grandma used to make stinging nettle soup a lot (I think a Swedish thing) - it tasted great, mostly like spinach and vegetable stock! Always feel nostalgic whenever I see it anywhere.

My neighbor uses the stinging nettles out of my yard to make an amazing risotto. Every spring there’s a part of my yard that gets covered with them.