I seem to be on a roll now with successful soups!
We’ve just had nettle soup for lunch, so simple to make and costs nothing but a couple of potatoes (unless you grow your own) cream, nutmeg, seasoning… oh and an onion.
Using rubber gloves, cut your nettles, strip them of their leaves and rinse very, very well. Cook for literally a couple of minutes only in a little water until they wilt down like spinach, then strain but keep the lovely green water.
Take a couple of cooked potatoes – or some left-over mash, some onions fried in butter and oil, and blend the vegetables with the wilted nettles, picking out any nettle stalks (you can do this with your bare hands now!)
Sieve, return to pan and heat gently adding a little cornflour blended with cream – do just a little at a time and then add a little more if you need it, otherwise you might accidentally end up with wallpaper paste. Season well (it needs more salt than you think it will) and plenty, I mean plenty of nutmeg.. Add as much cream as you like to your taste or maybe cream cheese if you have some hanging about that needs using. I cooked some crispy bacon for a garnish and then all was ready.
Serve with a swirl of cream and another sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg.
Lois Elsden 
Never tried old nettles (though I remember nettle beer being made from them when I was a child) but young nettles as a veg are a favourite in our house – beat spinach hands down and, as you say, cost nothing. May I suggest that sour cream is better than sweet cream?
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Oooh,sour cream, yes, why didn’t I think of that!
I’ve not used nettles as a vegetable, but I’m going to try next time we get some young shoots. Cook them like spinach?
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So are these like the stinging nettles? I have never heard of eating them! I have had fiddle heads, which are small ferns still curled up. They are quite good. Nettles? Wow, I would have never thought to eat them.
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Yes stinging nettles – hence the rubber gloves. Honestly they are delicious! The soup is a gorgeous colour – which doesn’t quite show on my photo, and also if you use young nettles the soup is brighter in colour… but it’s divine, and free!
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