Eat Your Weeds // Nettle Soup Recipe

Have you tried nettle soup? It’s a super tasty way to enjoy this abundant spring time plant. It’s packed with many nourishing vitamins and minerals including iron making it a lovely thing to add into soups and stews for an iron boost. You could add it to any soup you are making but it goes really nicely with potato making a nice hearty meal to fuel all your springtime activities.

Afraid I’m not one for exact measurements in cooking but here is the rough recipe. It’s easy to adapt to your own taste and also whatever veg you have lying around!

INGREDIENTS

• 3 large potatoes

• 1 tin of butter beans (any beans will do)

• One small bag of nettle tops (top 4-6 leaves)

• Handful of parsley (or any other leafy herb of your choice)

• Handful of 3 cornered leek (optional)

• 1 onion

• Few cloves of garlic

• 1 litre of veggie stock

• Lemon to serve

RECIPE

1. Chop and fry in a little oil (I used sunflower) the onion, garlic, 3 cornered leek and parsley stalks until soft
2. Peel and chop potato into small chunks. Can also leave peel on
3. Make up the stock. I used 1 veggie stock cube in about 1 litre of water
4. Add potatoes into the pan with the stock and heat to a light boil
5. Once potatoes have started to soften add in the nettles (washed) and simmer for about 10minutes
6. Add in butter beans and chopped parsley leaves and cook for about 10 more minutes
7. Season with salt and pepper as you like
8. I used a hand blender to make my soup smooth but you can also leave it as a chunky soup. You can add more water to adjust the thickness here.
9. I chopped and fried some stale bread to make croutons to add on top along with a splash of olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon. Also added a little bit of fresh parsley and a primrose flower for extra jazz.

Happy soup making!

If you’d like to learn more about how to identify herbs in the wild, come along to one of our Herb Walks.