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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. Bu
by IgorPartola 11mo ago
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.
- arresin 11mo agoI dunno man. A soup with “crap-ivoi”. Sounds sketchy.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- broken-kebab 11mo agoYou 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
- dvh 11mo agoAxe head soup strikes again
- jonah 11mo agoI've always heard it as Stone Soup, but I presume it's the same thing.
- wizzwizz4 11mo agoI know it as Stone Porridge. These stories probably share an origin. https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html is sitting in my browser bookmarks, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup has some variations not listed on that page.
- fifilura 11mo agoIn Sweden it is "Koka soppa på en spik". "Make soup with a (iron) nail". We also eat nettle soup with a boiled egg-half. I would not call it bland, it is just a dish that does not scream with its loudest voice in your face.
- fifilura 11mo agoI'd also like to add that I'd consider it a delicacy. Because it is pretty much the first vegetable that you can harvest in spring. And you don't have to have a garden, you can just go out and pick it from anywhere.
- RyanOD 11mo agoOne of my all-time favorite stories. My dear mother told me this story when I was just a boy. I was enchanted by the idea of this magical stone, too young to consider the clever trick the tramp was playing on the woman. The sense of cooking being a magical endeavor has stayed with me ever since.
- ewoodrich 11mo agoHah I misinterpreted it a different way as a kid, for a long time I thought it was like a collective delusion where the shared experience of contributing insubstantial garnishes to a pot of water tricked everyone into finding it filling and enjoying it.
- fhdkweig 11mo agoWhile that was the way it was taught to me as a kid, I thought it was more of a story about con men who came to a village and tricked the townsfolk to eat their entire winter rations in a grand feast and then skipped town before anyone realized what they did.
- verall 11mo agoIt wasn't a trick, the magic stone was a big salt rock. It was the most important ingredient from a flavor standpoint.
- s_dev 11mo agoThe key is to add lots of onions and garlic and some butter to give it base flavor. The nettles give off great colour and a more subtle flavor and of course add more nutrients. The real key though is stinging nettles just simply grow like crazy in your backyard (at least in Ireland) so it's a two birds with the one stone kind of deal, you're gardening as well as cooking. There is also the 'badass' feeling of eating something that previously was dangerous. The heat will denature any stingers in the soup.
- sleepybrett 11mo agoAs a kid is somewhat rural western washington our backyard bordered on a many acred wood and just beyond our backyard fence was just a huge tangle of blackberry and nettles. As kids we'd get our dads machetes and carve a path into the woods proper every spring and every few years our family and the families on either side would spend a day trying to eradicate the encroaching blackberries to no ultimate avail. We never ate the nettles, just had 1000 remedies for stings, but we did eat a lot of blackberry jam, cobblers and pies.
- toast0 11mo agoI'm in western washington and some people (not me) do eat the nettles. The blackberries are of course, delicious and well used. Always a good idea to pick above waist height of dogs. ;)
- schainks 11mo agoThank you for the correct google term to plug in! I do this all the time in Chinese, but have no idea where to start with other languages I don't speak.
- agapon 11mo agoI remember it as borsch with nettle. Nettle was one of the first green things in the spring, just after snow melted. Nettle borsch was cooked just like the regular one but with nettle instead of cabbage.
- foobarian 11mo agoI'm also from around there. Another very effective flavor enhancer for pretty much any soup or stew or chowder is cold smoked pork. Ribs, pancetta, sausages...
- alexsmirnov 11mo agoIt's also worth to mention that early spring sprouts do not sting at all. Cold "борщ" from them is delicious.