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Classic Nettle Soup

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Classic Stinging Nettle Soup Stinging nettles are one of the finest wild greens you can use to make soup, and there’s plenty of recipes out there. Some recipes are good, some are ok. Most of the ones I’ve tried have tasted mostly of potatoes or rice. This one is the strongest tasting nettle soup I know of, and it’s my version of the most commonly version relying on nettles, vegetables, a little potato, and a splash of cream. It’s Spring in a bowl, a hyper-seasonal dish I look forward to making every year, and it’s gone through a number of revisions over the years to hone and improve it. 

I made the first version one year when I was planning the most elaborate meal I’d ever served, a dinner for four CEO’s that I billed at 1k/head. I built the menu and every recipe from the ground up, testing, re-testing, and agonizing over the details of everything. There was foie gras, osetra caviar, quail eggs scented with Italian black winter truffles, a trio of locally farmed goose, along with a flight of desserts and wine pairings, but the thing that people raved about the most? The humble nettle soup. 

Common stinging nettles (Urtica dioica)

Common stinging nettles will be the species most people are familiar with.

As I worked on the soup, I tried different ways of thickening it. Potatoes are the most common, but sometimes I like to use rice. Roux was out of the picture as the soup needed to be gluten free. After tasting the potato and rice-thickened versions side-by-side, I was stumped. Neither soup had the vibrant, verdant taste of nettle I wanted. 

Wood Nettles or Laportea canadensis

Wood nettles. These are similar to common nettles and are fine to use as a substitute here.

One day, at work in the restaurant, while I was instructing a line cook on the importance of blanching certain vegetables in salted water, for whatever reason I had the realization of exactly why my nettle soup wasn’t intensely nettle-y. It seemed to me there were two compounding things I was overlooking. 

Blanching removes flavors 

  1. I was blanching and shocking the nettles in water, then squeezing them dry. Blanching, while necessary for somethings, isn’t necessary for some greens, and the water leeches out plenty of flavor from them. Steaming the nettles quickly, then allowing them to cool, spread out on a tray as I mentioned in my post on Turkish Steamed Nettles, will keep the flavor vibrant as no flavorful solutes are lost to water. That being said, you can get a great result from either blanched or steamed nettles here-the potato tip below is the most important for the correct flavor. 

Calming the potato 

Traditionally, the nettles and vegetables are cooked together with the potato or rice and pureed. This, combined with the blanching, ends up making nettle soup that tastes more strongly of potato or rice than it does nettle to me. I suspected that cooking potatoes separately in water and discarding that is discarded after cooking would not only bring the flavor of the nettle to the front, but also remove some of the starch of the potato that can get overpowering and gummy tasting in pureed soups. 

Both my hunches were right, and the finished version using those two nuggets of clarity was the version I served for the dinner. To this day it is still the recipe I reach for when I want someone to taste the true flavor of nettles. 

Classic Stinging Nettle Soup

Traditional Stinging Nettle Soup or nasselsoppa
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Classic Stinging Nettle Soup

A rich, ultra nettley stinging nettle soup made with nettles, stock, vegetables, potato, and a splash of cream.
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time45 mins
Course: Appetizer, Soup
Cuisine: American, French
Keyword: Nettle Soup, Stinging Nettles, Wood Nettles
Servings: 6

Ingredients

Soup

  • 4 cups chicken stock
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 2 cups diced peeled russet potato, roughly 1 large potato
  • 2 cups diced leeks
  • 2 medium sized shallots diced small
  • 1 small yellow onion diced
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 cup diced celery
  • Kosher salt to taste
  • White pepper to taste
  • 8 oz stinging nettles or roughly half a paper grocery bag full This should yield about 1 heaping packed cup after blanching, shocking and mincing.

Finishing and serving

  • Crème fraiche
  • chopped dill or mint
  • chopped hard boiled egg optional
  • Ramp leaf oil optional

Instructions

Potato

  • Cook the potato in unseasoned water until soft, then set aside, keeping the potato in the cooking water until you need them. Meanwhile, bring a gallon of lightly salted water to a boil.

Nettles

  • Working in batches in a large pasta pot fitted with a steamer basket, steam the nettles until completely wilted, a minute or two. Make sure the nettles are completely wilted, as if they're not they might discolor. If you're more comfortable blanching nettles, that's fine, to blanch them, blanch the nettles for 10 seconds in boiling, salted water, then remove to a tray to cool. Squeeze the nettles of excess water, chop finely and reserve.

Building the soup

  • Sweat the celery, onion, shallot and leek, then add the chicken stock and bring the mixture to a simmer and cook on medium-low until the vegetables are tender, about 15-20 minutes.
  • Add the cooked potatoes, then puree the soup, working in batches if necessary until very smooth in a highspeed blender. Pour the pureed soup into a pot (preferably metal as it cools faster) and chill in a sink of cold water or in a bowl with ice water.

Refreshing the color

  • When the soup is cooled a bit, but still warm, puree a qt or two with ¾ of the nettles until very smooth, then add back to the soup. Season the mixture with salt and white pepper to taste.
  • Add the rest of the finely chopped, reserved nettles back to the soup as a garnish. Finally, whisk in the cream to loosen it.

Finishing

  • Assess the consistency, if you prefer your soup more thin, add a splash of stock or water until it looks good to you. Double check the seasoning for salt and pepper, adjust until you like the taste, whisking to make sure the salt is completely dissolved before adding more, then serve, or transfer to a container and refrigerate for up to 3 days. The flavor will be at it's peak if it's made the night before.

Serving

  • Serve the soup ladles into warm bowls, garnished with spoonfuls of creme fraiche and the ramp oil, if using.

 

Related

Previous Post: « Wood Nettle Soup with Pickled Chanterelles and Ramp Butter
Next Post: Pasta Fagioli Soup with Nettle Pesto »

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Alan Bergo
I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. You tak I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. 

You take the pure juice of the leaves, mix it with salt, Koji rice, and more chopped fresh ramp leaves, then ferment it for a bit. 

After the fermentation you put it into a dehydrator and cook it at 145-150 F for 30 days. 

The slow heat causes a Maillard/browning reaction over time. 

After 30 days you strain the liquid and bottle it. It’s the closest thing to plant-based fish sauce I’ve had yet. 

The potency of ramps is a pretty darn good approximation of the glutamates in meat. But you could prob make something similar with combinations of other alliums. 

The taste is crazy. I get toasted ramp, followed by mellow notes from the fermentation. Potent and delicate at the same time. 

I’ve been using it to make simple Japanese-style dipping sauces for tempura etc. 

Pics: 
2: Ramp juice 
3: Juicy leaf pulp 
4: Squeezing excess juice from the pulp
5: After 5 days at 145F 
6: After 30 days 
7: Straining through Muslin to finish

#ramps #veganfishsauce #experimentalfood #kojibuildscommunity #fermentation #foraging
Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Pepin used to make for French president Charles de Gaulle. 

You bake eggs in a ramekin with shrimp topped with creamy morel sauce and eat with toast points. 

Makes for a really special brunch or breakfast. Recipe’s on my site, but it’s even better to watch Jacques make it on you tube. 

#jacquespepin #morels #shrimp #morilles #brunchtime
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
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