Eating Stinging Nettles
63 comments
·November 6, 2025IgorPartola
broken-kebab
You ate it in a hearty soup, likely made on pork bone broth, with a boiled egg, and sour cream added. It makes a lot of difference for culinary experience :) The other commenter probably just tried to add it to some rice, or as a "side green". On itself nettle is more or less like spinach, but with weaker taste
bn-l
I dunno man. A soup with “crap-ivoi”. Sounds sketchy.
alexjplant
100% thought this would be about eating jellyfish (which I'm completely on board with because they've stung me upwards of a dozen times and because of that old Klingon proverb that says that revenge, much like jellyfish, is a dish best served cold).
Apropos of stinging plants though both of my parents are supposedly very allergic to poison ivy. I maintained an immunity to it until I was around 27-28 when it began to affect me very slightly. Now if I graze it I can get away without ill effects merely by washing the urushiol off with dish soap within a half hour or so. I've heard of gardeners and outdoorspeople eating it in small quantities to maintain their resistance to it. While I'm not particularly keen to try this there is something poetic about it.
Raztuf
>People think that when you become vegan you have to give up lots of food. It’s true that I stopped eating animals but the number of different species I eat has grown considerably. This is because meat-eaters tend to eat the same few species of animals over and over again – pigs, cows, chickens. Whereas there are some 20,000 species of edible plants in the world.
I was vegetarian for 10 years until around COVID. I often want to go back to vegetarianism, not for ethical or health reasons, just for the sheer diversity of what I ate and the fun of cooking with limitations.
Sharlin
I can't see how using plants diversely in cooking implies having to go full vegetarian.
kqr
The term you're looking for is "creative constraint". Some people (I am one of them) need the constraint enforced more brutally in order for it to work at all.
Sure, I could develop a minimalistic game using the Unity engine – but I find it much easier when I'm using the Pico-8 fantasy console to force myself to do so.
Similarly, I could cook a varied vegetable meal any day of the week – but I find it much easier when I'm using vegetarianism to force myself to do so.
ajuc
It's why chip tunes are so great. Different constraints force people to rethink basic assumptions.
kawsper
That’s an interesting perspective, I found out something similar when travelling as a vegan.
The limitations put up forces you to go hunt for smaller, and sometimes fringe restaurants, located off the beaten path run by passionate people.
ungreased0675
This is true. I’m not vegan or vegetarian, but I look for restaurants that cater to those audiences when traveling. It’s probably because they’re putting a lot more attention into the ingredients, which reflects as a more thoughtful end product.
matthewaveryusa
Oh yeah my polish grandmother (100 and still kicking!) cooked some. Tastes like spinach and was great.
Fun story (semi related) she visited us in the US in 2015 and my sister served her kale. She amusingly said: “I haven’t had this since ww2” apparently when food was scarce they grew kale which was easy to grow in Poland and packed with nutrients
Tade0
Funnily enough around a decade ago or so it was fashionable in some circles in Poland to eat kale and it brought all kinds of ridicule from people questioning the plant's purported benefits.
A lot of the more recent examples of Polish cuisine are dishes originally invented out of poverty and made largely out of cheap ingredients and which now took a new form using stuff unheard of at the time because the real recipe is not to contemporary taste.
My favourite example of that would be cold cheesecake - originally made largely from cottage cheese, nowadays has mascarpone as the main ingredient.
Mascarpone! Hardly anyone knew what mascarpone even was in the 70s.
proxysna
My family in Belarus used to make a soup with it. Exactly like spinach, maybe more fibery texture.
comrade1234
Yeah it's not as common here (Zurich) as the USA. Also, collard greens just don't seem to exist here.
hobs
Yes, my grandmother told me how the "Greek diet" was the one they ate while the Nazis tried to starve them out.
crazybonkersai
Stinging nettles are often touted as free abundant superfood, but the truth is it is rather bland and boring. Yes, edible, but you would be better of grabbing some established greens from a local grocery store.
deepvibrations
Are other greens really much more tasty? Either way, many superfoods are not eaten solo - you can mix with basil for a lovely pesto for example, or simply add some nettle to your normal stew/soup for added nutrients.
I have nettle tea every morning and now thinking about the standard black tea, I see that as "bland/boring". I admit it didn't appeal at first, but now I love the earthy taste, so maybe it's slightly acquired taste?
technothrasher
I've always liked nettle tea, but perhaps that's because I grew up with it. I also "invented" catnip tea. Yes, I know, everybody knows about catnip tea. But as I kid I didn't, and I noticed that catnip and nettles often were growing together wild on our farm. I suspected the catnip had evolved to hide in the nettles, because it looks very similar to it. Don't know if that's true or if it was just because they liked similar conditions. But, since I was often taking the nettles for tea, I figured I'd try the catnip. It was good.
deepvibrations
Interesting - never tried catnip tea, so if I see some, i'll give it a try!
zikduruqe
> superfood
Most superfoods are what we ate when we were poor growing up. Nettles, collards, mustard greens, kale...
My opinion, the word superfood, gets people to pay a premium for cheap and easily commercially grown plants.
afpx
That's awesome they gave you greens. All I seemed to get were bricks of moldy cheese, dried milk and occasional bread and mayo sandwiches.
esafak
> bricks of moldy cheese
That's the good stuff!?
CuriouslyC
Tell me you had a single mother who got WIC without telling me directly.
mikepurvis
Kale has entered the chat.
lxgr
As a cyclist occasionally brushing against stinging nettles when the city can’t clear them fast enough after a growth season, I do applaud everyone picking and eating as much as they can carry :)
spaqin
In Eastern European countryside a hundred years ago, nettles used to be the last resort in early spring when winter supplies were growing thin, and anything growing and not poisonous would be cooked. Sure, they have some nutritional value, but there are reasons why they're not really eaten nowadays...
mooreds
I grow stinging nettles. I used to just steam them for 10 or so minutes. Then they're a normal green. Can mix with eggs, eat plain on the side, add some salt.
Pretty good stuff.
If you do grow them, make sure you situate them in a corner of the yard--no fun to get stung.
madmountaingoat
I've had them. They're fine. But this is overselling the variety angle. The meat eater equivalence of forage like this would be game animals. In my experience and extrapolating, the taste difference between game and farm animals is generally greater than among the green vegetables.
cbolton
Not sure I agree, I think there's as much difference between spinach, leek, fennel and Brussels sprouts as between beef and deer and that's without foraging into fancy vegetables...
suddenlybananas
Of those four, only really spinach would be considered "greens" I think.
cbolton
Ah interesting, I thought greens were all green vegetables. It's a bit of a moot point though, since the blog post is about edible plants in general.
mmsc
There's a restaurant in Sarajevo which specializes in this stuff, called The Singing Nettle. Recommended.
thenthenthen
There is also ‘nettle beer’, dunno if my batch failed but it was undrinkable
flir
Nettle tea's nice, from what I remember. Use the young tips of the plants.
bn-l
Thirding. Extremely wholesome and warming. I need to get some more of that it has been a while.
faeyanpiraat
I can second this, add just a tiny bit sugar and it is delicious
myth_drannon
When people mention nettles, they also mention dandelions too. Both are good sources of nutrients
Semaphor
We used to have nettle salad as a kid. IIRC if you cut them fine enough, they stop stinging or something like that. Can’t quite remember, so maybe DYOR before you make a salad ;)
sergioisidoro
Just make sure not to pick them from fertilized ground (like garden beds) as they may have high levels of nitrites (?).
Pick them from wild areas
I grew up in Ukraine and stinging nettle soups were a popular part of our diet in the summers. It is delicious and I definitely don’t agree that it is bland. But I suspect a big part of it is what else you add to it. My suggestion is to look up “суп с крапивой” and use your favorite method of translating it to your language of choice to look at the variety of recipes.