The stinging nettle is a popular herb, used in many kitchens allover the world. Many people consume this herb, in different forms, for its immense health benefits.
The Ogiek community in Kenya’s Rift valley region, eat the stinging nettle as a vegetable. This they do by serving it as an accompaniment to Ugali, Kenya’s popular corn meal, which is the country’s staple food.
This wonder herb grows in very fertile grounds, and for this one that we cooked, we harvested it from a cows shed that cows no longer slept in.
My host told me that if you want the best tasty stinging nettle to make vegetables, then you pick the softest buds, which are normally the 4 topmost leaves. She also stated that the best time to harvest and cook them is during the rainy season, because they are usually tender, as opposed to ones picked in the drought or sunny season which are normally very tough, and the taste is not that great.
I will take you through the step by step procedure of preparing the stinging nettle vegetable, right from harvesting, to cleaning, cooking and finally serving.
Requirements
A fertile garden of young tender stinging nettles
A pair of gloves or 4 plastic bags
A sharp knife
2 Litres of water
Half cup sour or fresh cream
Half a teaspoon of salt
procedure
Wear your gloves or 2 layers of plastic bags on each hand, to protect your skin from stings from the nettles, while harvesting them.
Look for young and tender nettles, cut the 4 topmost leaves.
Harvest approximately 1 large bowl full. Once done harvesting, sort the nettles to another clean bowl, this allows you to separate the nettles from grass or any other weed that may have gone unseen, when cutting the nettles.
Next, you pour water into the bowl that has the sorted nettles. Give it a slight mix with your gloves or plastic bags on, or simply use a cooking stick to mix the nettles with the water, after that, drain the water. Repeat the procedure until your nettles are clean, you just want to wash off any soil or other unwanted particles.
Transfer your nettles into a clean cooking pot, add 1 cup of water, sprinkle some salt, cover it and bring it to a boil for 15 minutes, on low heat.
You can checked if its cooked, if its not, and it looks like it still needs some more water, do not hesitate to add some. Once cooked, drain any excess water if any. To ensure the nettles end up in tiny pieces and not whole leaves that will look weird on your plate when served with ugali, pound it slightly with your cooking stick, this will mash it up into smaller bits.
Once mashed up, pour in half a cup of sour or fresh cream, if you have none of these, just add a quatre cup of fresh milk, mix it up, let it simmer for 5 mins. At this point you can now taste, and just experience the tantalizing taste of nettle burst in your mouth.
Serve hot with hot ugali, wash it down with mursik, a traditional sour milk from the Ogiek community.
Why stinging nettle for a vegetable though...
Well, I asked the Ogiek people, why choose the stinging nettle as a vegetable, and they tell me that since they are Kenya’s hunters and gathers community, they have lived almost all their lives in the forest, so they depend mostly on herbs that grow in the forest for food, and for them, a lot of herbs that some people will consider as weeds, are actually vegetables for them, and incase you are wondering, they know how to differentiate edible ones from poisonous ones. So this is just a way of life for them, since the times of their fore fathers.
We truly live in a diverse world.
I cant wait to try these.