The perfect ... Nettle soup

The first time I made nettle soup, it was edible, but underwhelming, leading me to the conclusion that, while I was glad one could eat one of the few edible wild foods in abundance locally, I wouldn’t be rushing to repeat the experience. Turns out I was just doing it wrong. Delicious, nutritious and cheap, this is a dish well worth getting the rubber gloves out for.

If you have very young nettles, use them stems and all, otherwise discard any tough stalks. Either way, wear gloves!

Melt the butter in a pan, then sweat the chopped onion until soft. Add the garlic, season and add nutmeg to taste

The nettles

You’ll need said gloves both to gather and to sort the nettles – look for tender, young stalks, or pick the top few leaves from more robust, older plants. Some recipes, such as that from legendary forager Roger Philips’ book Wild Food and the late chef Alastair Little’s Keep it Simple, call for the leaves alone, others stick the whole lot in and Valentina Harris uses just the stems in Italian Regional Cooking. Apparently, in Molise, “they consider young nettle stalks to have a flavour superior to that of asparagus!” and I’m surprised to find that they have a delicate, juicy texture and a green, slightly petrolly flavour. Her soup is very good, but it’s not the one I’m seeking here.

Now that I know how nice they can be, it seems silly to discard those

Stir in the flour, then add the milk bit by bit, whisking to keep it smooth. Add the stock and cook until it thickens stems, but do go through your nettles before washing and discard any thicker, dryer stalks, because they will cause problems for all but the toughest of blenders. And, though it involves using more pans, I’d also suggest cooking the nettles separately, rather than with the rest of the soup, because that means you can plunge them into cold water once they’re done, thus maintaining their vibrant colour, and also gives you a chance to weed out any errant tough stems before it’s too late. How long they take to blanch depends on their age, but somewhere between the 10 minutes in Florence White’s 1932 collection Good Things in England and Little’s 60 seconds should do it.

The flavourings

White’s recipe is very plain, and

Meanwhile, blanch the nettles for about four minutes, until wilted; older leaves may take longer