Nettles From The Wild

Nettles are my go-to herb for springtime allergies. They’re safe to use medicinally because they’re safely eaten in large quantities as a food staple.

Nettles are rich in quercetin, which is an antihistamine bioflavonoid.  They’re also full of vitamins and minerals needed to quell allergic responses. They nourish while they calm allergies. What a nice combo! 🍃 

In this video I share how I harvest and use fresh nettles from the wild, and how to dry them for later storage.

Make sure to wear gloves! They’re called stinging nettles for a reason. And only eat cooked or steamed nettles, never fresh.

Enjoy!


TRANSCRIPT

If you have spring allergies and you’re lucky enough to live somewhere where there are nettles, then you are lucky because nettles help with spring allergies. They’re also incredibly high in minerals, high in bioflavonoids and all kinds of lovely, wonderful things. 

And I just wanted to show you like a little morning routine. I woke up this morning with a little ahem you know and I thought, “I’m going to go get some nettles and make some nettle tea,” and then also eat the nettles. They’re just beautiful. You can make nettles soup. You can make all kinds of things. They sting when they’re fresh, use gloves. But once you cook them, you can eat them without any kind of sting. 

So I have a video out there showing you how to use nettles to make a nettle lemonade which is my favorite. And I just wanted to show you how easy it is to work with fresh nettles. You basically just get a bunch, cut off the muddy ends and then you stick it in a kettle like that. Boom. You use as little water as possible to cover the nettles. And then boil it for, you know just get the water to boiling and then usually I’ll boil it because of the sting part I boil it for another two to three minutes. That might be a little long. But that’s kind of how I’ve done it. So you can strain it if you’re worried about that. You can strain it and drink that as tea directly. You can mix it with a little lemonade so it’s nettle lemonade. And you can eat the nettles. It’s just fantastic. All from my yard.

So if you don’t happen to have a yard that has wild things growing, you can find an abandoned field that hasn’t been chemically sprayed and just go harvest your own. And I like to extra harvest more nettles than I need now to dry and use through the wintertime. So this is one way to do it too. You can collect up nettles. You just collect it in a bunch, loosely, loosely wrap it; you want air to get through there to dry it. I use twist ties because they’re just easy. I can then twist tie it to anything. Anything that has a way to hang herbs in my kitchen, in my garage, in my living room; my kids are just used to this. I try to dry these and then once it’s fully dried, you can break it up and put it a glass container and you can save it to use all year long until the next nettles season. 

So I wanted to share that. I was just out in my garden and I thought, “You know I’m going to make a video about this” because you too might have woken up with ahem that kind of stuff.

All right, thank you very much. This is Dr. Jill Crista.


This content is health information and not intended as personal medical advice. Viewing will not establish a doctor-patient relationship. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or medical condition. The information discussed is not intended to replace the advice of your healthcare provider. Reliance on information provided by Dr. Jill Crista, employees, or others appearing at the invitation of Dr. Crista is solely at your own risk.