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Stinging nettles taste good. They have a long history of human consumption. They're in a family of plants (Urticaceae) containing no other common food crops, so
by mrob 11mo ago
Stinging nettles taste good. They have a long history of human consumption. They're in a family of plants (Urticaceae) containing no other common food crops, so they increase variety of diet, which to me seems like a good idea. The main drawback is the bad texture. The stinging hairs have an unpleasant furry texture even after you cook them (which stops them from stinging but does not remove them). This is why they're traditionally served blended or finely chopped in soups. If somebody could breed a version without the stinging hairs (not merely inactivating them) I think they would make a good commercial crop.
- kulahan 11mo agoWe eat some thistles, which have basically the same issue - see artichokes. Gotta boil them to deactivate the needles, though I have no idea how the thistle and nettle needles compare biologically. Anyways, I guess my point is that it shouldn't be too hard to get Americans to eat these. Every time I go out for hotpot, I get as many greens as possible; I love boiling them down in a tasty broth and chowing down on an entire football field of vegetables, sometimes wrapped around a piece of meat. I could see adding them in here easily. There are also a lot of dishes you can add a big handful of chopped, frozen spinach to for some additional nutrition. These would be another incredible option in scenarios like that. Blending it down to add a more herby flavor to a puree, or to bulk up a pesto, or something along those lines could work well.
- mrob 11mo agoYou can scrape the needles off artichoke hearts, and you can buy them canned with the needles already removed. This isn't practical with stinging nettles.
- dheera 11mo agoI thought nettle stings were made of silica. Isn't that basically glass? How does water deactivate it?
- buildbot 11mo agoI would assume it denatures the chemicals the sting delivers
- kulahan 11mo agoOn nettles, they're trichomes[1]. Probably somewhat similar to a skin tag? So it deactivates them by weakening the cell wall, just like when you cook the rest of the plant down. >Both trichomes and root hairs [...] are lateral outgrowths of a single cell of the epidermal layer. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichome
- avadodin 11mo agoThe mineralization is just on the tips of the trichomes. When dry they are irritating if rubbed against the skin but not stingy anymore and when boiled they have at most a sandy nature as the trichomes soften and can't penetrate as well.
- buildbot 11mo agoIt’s not uncommon to eat nettles in the PNW! I knew people who would fold the leaves a specific way to break the stingers off so you could eat the leaves raw even.
- ihsw 11mo agoOne delicious usage is blanching and then blending it into flour for green spaghetti.