To nettle is to torment, to annoy, and to irritate. Yet the nettle itself, Urtica dioica, in all its weedy persistence and spine-covered cruelty – the plant is practically begging us to stay away from it – is a prized harvest by wildcrafters and cooks around the world.
The nettle’s culinary and medicinal uses are as commonplace as its references in folklore and literature. It is used as an anti-inflammatory, a blood-sugar regulator, and a calming skin salve, not to mention as a pollinator attractor and soil enhancer. Nettles contain high levels of protein, iron, vitamin C, and vitamin A. Plus, they have a bright flavor that’s somewhere between spinach and cucumber with a tinge of meaty wildness.
Yet for all the nettle’s benefits, it is still a wild, stinging weed. Everyone from farmers and foragers to forest-loving children have horror stories about being pricked by its needles. We’ve saved our relationship with this corner of the wild kingdom by learning to shield ourselves in sleeves and gloves when cutting from the nettle bush, and by boiling the harvest before using it in food preparation. As an added bonus, the leftover nettle water can then be drunk as a healthy tisane.
When considering nature’s offering of a dagger-lined plant that can be transformed into a delicious and beneficial comestible, the nettle becomes all the more beautiful. It is perfect unto itself, a plant that can sting us with formic acid but then reduce pain and inflammation with that very same chemical.
Perhaps the nettle’s lesson is that there is a reward to be had by anyone bold enough to bear through the pain. Aesop said, “Gently touch a nettle and it’ll sting you for your pains/Grasp it as a lad of mettle and soft as silk remains.” It’s only by boldly facing the brambly and sharp-leaved nettle bush that we are rewarded.
This season at SHED, we’ve grasped the nettle quite literally, and using Preston Farm and Winery’s harvest of nettle spring tips, our glove-handed kitchen team has put it on top of our pizzette and our fermentation crafter has brewed it into our house kombucha, along with its fellow wildings, dandelion greens and chervil. Come enjoy, no gloves required.