Stinging nettle has a long history of human use, dating back thousands of years. It has been valued for its medicinal properties, as well as for its utility as fiber and food. Its young, tender leaves can be cooked and eaten like spinach, providing a nutritious addition to the diet. Nettle soup, in particular, has been a traditional dish in many cultures.
“While some things you can eat right away, maybe even raw, there are other things that you forage that unless they’re prepared in just the right way, are actually poisonous. So you need kind of special knowledge for that, and that brings us to the idea of special knowledge. Foraging is all about information and knowledge about where you’re at and what there is available.”
This Townsends video takes a closer look at different types of foraging and a specific nettle soup made during 1700s and early 1800s America. During this period, settlers traversed Indigenous lands without the extensive knowledge of Indigenous peoples, such as the Lenape people, Sacagawea of the Lemhi Shoshone people, and numerous other unnamed tribes.
“There are times when the only way to survive is to forage, to find food in the wild wherever you can find it, but it takes special knowledge. There are many instances in history when, if we look at different journals in the 18th century, we find people who, at the edge of survival, had to go out and find their food.”
“Somebody like Nicholas Cresswell or the Lewis and Clark expedition, they are in the worst kind of circumstances. Maybe they’re at the end of winter and there’s no real food left, or they’re in the wilderness and they’re traveling or exploring and they’re out of supplies. You read about this over and over again, and that last bit of energy they use to find food that will sustain them until they get to ‘civilization.'”
The soup is made from a variety of greens, including nettles or dandelions, along with any remaining beef and oatmeal. The recipe may be specifically from the journals of the missionary John Heckewelder. Watch as greens, meat, and oatmeal are boiled to create a sustaining broth.
Townsends explores historical reenactments and cooking in 18th and early 19th-century American history from the colonists’ perspectives. Find their videos on YouTube and Instagram.
Watch this next:
• How to make dandelion fritters and smoothies
• Foraging Seaweed: Harvesting a French Coastal Superfood
• Joseph Plumb Martin and A Starving Winter Soldier’s Meager Meal
• An 18th-century No-Nails Survival Shelter
• The Cook’s Atelier: Farm to table in Burgundy, France
• What is Botany? Alexis Nikole Nelson explains with Crash Course Botany
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