Nettles

I have recently been reading up on stinging nettles. I picked some for a vegetable soup but wondered what else they could be used for and what they are good for.

Most advocate using fresh nettles but as they aren't young enough for long (top leaves only and before flowering), others suggest freezing or drying them, so I did the latter.

Donning rubber washing up gloves in a lovely shade of pink, I set of to a local patch. Avoiding those close to the track where dogs might have peed on them, I moved further up the ground to fresh newly emerged ones. Now I had my eye in on what to look for, I avoided the new dead nettles (different family, edible but not so tasty).

I picked two bowls worth, came home, rinsed and spun them in my salad spinner:

Their stalks were cut off before laying them into 5 of my dehydrator trays. (Can be done in a cooling oven or on a sunny windowsill). I dried them for 4 hours, the smell was divine for the first hour, not dissimilar to freshly mown grass:

Once dried, I tipped the trays onto my worktop to ease scooping them into my blender. Be warned, they can still sting at this stage as I found out!

Once whizzed up and sieved, this was the final product - about 5 tablespoons:

This precious powder is now stored in an airtight brown jar. There are loads of sites that talk about their benefits so I haven't bothered to link any here.