Have you ever felt the sharp sting and unpleasant tingle of the common nettle Urtica dioca. Have you searched for dock leaves to ease the pain? This week Club Wild took revenge by cooking some nettle leaves in a tasty soup full of vitamins.
Spring brings lots of wild foods as shoots spring from the ground and buds open. We tasted wild garlic leaves and flowers which SJ picked at the country park as they are also abundant at this time of year.
The young leaves of nettles are better for soup than the older ones . They are, however, no less potent so we made sure and took some sturdy gloves and scissors and a trug to carry our pickings.
To make our soup we used half a carrier bag of young fresh nettle leaves, a large finely chopped onion, 1 litre of vegetable or chicken stock, a large potato and 50g of butter. First we melted the butter in a pan and fried the onion on a lowish heat for 5-7 minutes until softened. Next chop the potato into chunks and add to the pan pouring in the stock. Once the root veg is soft (after about 15 minutes) we added our thoroughly washed young nettle leaves and simmered for five minutes. We took the pan off the heat and used a hand blender to puree the soup. You could add wild garlic leaves at the same time as the nettles.
The soup is an amazing green colour and most of us loved it
. We also learned about how good nettles are for butterflies with peacock, small tortoiseshell and red admiral caterpillars liking nettles best.
Club Wild, Miss Young, Mrs Szawlowska and Sarah-Jane
