In a moment of sheer madness on Sunday, I picked all the nettles in my garden and decided I would try and juice them. A friend of mine is currently having chemotherapy and I've promised her some nettle iron tonic, vinegar and soup.

On Sunday Chris retrieved my juicer out of the garage, cleaned it up and I started feeding it the nettles. It was a difficult process. I managed to overheat and shut down the juicer twice. I only got through half my basket of nettles and it produced 4 fluid ounces of amazing dark green juice. I thought I'd make a cold maceration with the remains of the nettle fibres and this produced a similarly dark green liquid, presumably because the cells were mashed up, releasing a load of chlorophyll. I've frozen all my produce as ice cubes and larger portions to either make into a juice combination or add to soup.

I wondered if anyone else produced their own herbal juices. What your experience has been and how have the juices been helpful?

Sarah

Hello Sarah

I've been meaning to make a nettle smoothie for a while now but wasn't sure if I needed to blanch or simmer the nettles first so they didn't have their sting. If you've just juiced them, I'm assuming the process is enough for the 'stingers' to be squashed? (please excuse my non technical terms!).

I do love nettles so would like to add them as the green part of a smoothie every now and then! Any advice gratefully received.

Madeleine

Your nettle juice sounds great -I recently heard that if you take that juice and bring it to the boil then simmer gently -it goes like tofu and is pure protein...I learnt this from a herbalist in the woods in dorset she has been running survival courses..
I myself have juiced large amounts a pint a day of cleavers and fat hen for a patient with breast cancer. I also often add ginger, parsley mint and basil to my carrot n apple juices lovely mmm

Hi Madeline

If you are going to use the nettles themselves for your smoothie, I would recommend you blanch them first for 30 seconds and then plunge them into ice cold water. This will remove the stings. The juice itself doesn't have any sting but I found to my cost that when I squeezed the plant matter/fibre remaining in the juicer the stings were definately there (this was 6pm and I could still feel the tingles on my hand when I went to bed!).

Karen - thanks for the ideas about juicing cleavers, I shall definately try that! Cleavers grow to magnificent proportions at the farm alongside the main nettle patch.

Sarah

I juiced Cleavers (or Sticky Willie to us Scots) a few years ago just to see what it tasted like. It was pretty fab! Goes well with carrot juice and freezes well as ice cubes. Someone at The Scottish School did a study on the properties pre- and post-freezing. A few years ago now but i think the abstract is available online at their website www.herbalmedicine.org.uk

Now, nettle juice... theres a thought...

Happy juicing people!

Claire
x

I have a lovely crop of watercress in the pond, I think I'll have a go at juicing that and a mountain of lemon balm that I think would be lovely, in fact I'm salivating at the thought of juiced lemon balm topped up with chilled lemonade or elderflower cordial!

I think my problem is being able to get enough of a single herb to make juice, nettles are realtively easy to access if I go for a walk, but some of the standard herbs to juice such as parsely I don't have in abundance.

How many people add herbs to smoothies? I make a lush one based on Sophie Grigsons Strawberry, Lemon Verbena & Mascarpone Fool recipe you can find on the HS site, I use a strawberry low fat yogurt, fresh strawberries, milk and about 12 lemon verbena leaves. Whizz it all up and indulge, less calories than the dessert variation but equally as yummy. Have found that a few lavender flower heads to a strawberry smoothie go really well.

Mint and pineapple go well together, rosemary perks up orange based smoothies or juices especially the ginger rosemary variety. Try freshly juiced oranges with a spring of ginger rosemary topped up with ginger ale yum! A bit of fresh basil can add a lovely twist to orange juice as well, and if you like tomato juice that can taste lovely with the addition of a little basil or thyme.

Debs

I tried juicing some fresh cleavers on Sunday afternoon. It was a little easier than juicing the nettles, but still managed to overheat the juicer. I got about 1 fl oz of dark green juice. It tasted.....green and fresh and went well with some apple and elder juice I'd got in the fridge. I'm sure it's Very Good For You, but I think I'll stick to tea and tincture as juicing makes my thumb joint ache!

Sarah