Stinging Nettle

FIND - Nettles are a very common wild food, especially in cooler and wetter climates. They can often be found at the edges of wild areas (often a little too easily!). Look for small young spring nettles and newly emerged nettle leaves.

Farmers markets will occasionally carry stinging nettles (especially if a marketer specializes in greens or wild foods). It's worth noting that these will be picked form the wild as well, since nettles are not generally cultivated in any meaningful way.

Identifying Stinging Nettles

Nettles are quite distinctive, and once you've gotten familiar with them you'll find you can recognize them at a distance (which is good...). The relatively narrow, heart-shaped leaves have a serrated edge, prominent veins on the underside, and of course the aforementioned glassy looking stinging hairs. These hairs look much more robust than the fuzz found on some plants, but not nearly large enough to be considered a spine or thorn.

The plant itself emerges from the ground very early in the spring and grows quickly.  It has a fairly upright, non-spreading growth habit.  The flowers are also quite distinctive - they look like small trailing garlands and emerge near where the leaves join the stalk.

CHOOSE - Whether you're picking your own nettles or getting them from a farmers' market, you'll want to look for bright green, entire leaves without obvious signs of insect or mechanical damage.  Avoid brown, mottled, or otherwise discolored leaves.  The leaves should be fairly small (a few inches at most) - large leaves are likely to be older, tougher, and less pleasantly flavoured.  Avoid mushy or overly wilted looking leaves.

If you're picking your own nettles, be certain that they are growing in a safe (pesticide-free) area, and that you are 100% certain of their identity.  Choose the youngest nettle plants that emerge early in spring, or the very new young leaves from small young bushes.

As a general rule, it's best to avoid leaves from plants that have begun to flower or set seed.  At this point in its life-cycle, the nettle plant begins producing deposits of calcium carbonate (lime) called cystoliths.  In addition to making the leaves unpleasantly tough, these can cause urinary tract irritation.

CAUTION: Stinging nettles can sting! It's right there in the name after all.  Be sure to where gloves when picking nettles and when handling them.  Once they've been cooked or dried they can no longer sting.

USE - Unless you're a masochist, you don't really want to eat raw nettle leaves as-is. I have seen recipes that use raw nettles to make pesto (apparently the processing removes the sting, though I'm not sure how the chemical compounds in question would be deactivated), but as a general rule you're going to want to cook your nettles.

Fortunately, cooking nettles is very simple and completely eradicates their stinging capabilities. The easiest and most common method involves bringing a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil, adding the nettles, and blanching for about 45 seconds to 1 minute. The nettles should be softer and a deeper green colour, but not falling apart.

Nettles can also be cooked using a variety of other methods - basically anything that works for spinach will work for nettles. Pan frying, stir-frying, sauteing, and similar stove-top methods will all work well. Nettles can also be added directly to soups and stews, or even baked.

Nettles can also be rendered sting-free by drying, though this is more commonly done when preparing nettles for teas and traditional herbal remedies.

Like so many herbaceous greens, stinging nettles have a flavour that's distinctive enough to make it difficult to replace, but familiar enough to make relatively close substitutions possible.

Spinach has a relatively similar texture and flavour, though it does not dry the same way, nor does it add the same slight peppery flavour to foods.

Kale is likewise fairly similar in texture, and dried kale works quite well in place of dried nettles. That being said, fresh kale tends to be tougher and a little more green and mustardy in taste than nettles.

Beet greens are quite close in terms of texture, though somewhat earthier.

Some bitter greens (e.g. escarole) can make an acceptable alternative, though the bitterness is, unsurprisingly, more prominent. Consider adding a little bit of escarole in combination with one of the other greens listed above.

Nettles, as a wild food, have not been cultivated to produce varieties. That being said, there is some variation within the wild populations around the world. Interestingly, some of these varieties lack the distinctive stinging hairs.  There's some confusion and disagreement about the naming and validity of the various subspecies (or species), but for culinary purposes it's worth pointing out that all varieties have stinging hairs with the exception of the European 'fen nettle' (Urtica dioica galeopsifolia, sometimes called U. d. pubescens).  An additional variety from Central Asia (U. d. afghanica) is sometimes stingless, and sometimes not.