The young hogweed leaf stalks and nettle tips are at their peak at the moment with regards the freshest, youngest greens. Hogweed is a plant that I have a lot of respect for, it is one of the true gourmet wild edibles, and it is well worth spending the time learning how to identify hogweed.
WARNING: Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) is part of the Carrot family and as such you must be 500% certain that you have identified this plant correctly. You must also gather it with gloves on as the sap can burn you. This is completely destroyed by cooking. ! DO NOT EAT THIS PLANT RAW ! Definitely not a plant for novice foragers to start playing around with. Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), is highly poisonous, and even brushing against it can give some people very serious burns.
In this recipe the delicate flavours of hogweed leaf stalks combine well with young nettle tips providing a wonderful tapas style side dish. In this recipe I am not going to give you quantities. I teach foraging using your senses, and as such the next shift is to start cooking with your senses, rather than relying on linear-mind quantities. If you look at old fashioned recipe books, ingredients were listed but rarely the quantities.
So go on, try this recipe and let me know how the recipe turned out for you.
Ingredients
- young hogweed leaf stalks (remove the leaves and use them for another dish)
- young nettle tips
- wild garlic
- coconut oil
- red chilli
- slices of parma ham
- cracked black pepper
- sea salt
Suggested Instructions
- Boil the hogweed stems and nettle tips for 5 minutes. Drain.
- Put a small amount of coconut butter in a frying pan along with the red chilli and sauté the hogweed and nettles with the wild garlic.
- Towards the end of cooking, tear up the Parma ham into pieces add to the wild greens, then quickly cook until done.
- Serve with bread as a snack or as a vegetable side dish
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Good mix of flavours Robin, but why not use some local rapeseed oil instead of coconut, you will get the earthy nutty flavour from the rape. I tried this but included some rape tops in bud which worked really well
I agree100% about using local – or British at least – rape oil. It’s British, it’s excellent for bee forage and it’s better for you even than olive oil – certainly far better than coconut.
Hi Robin,
Glad to see that you’re doing well this spring. It’s also interesting to find out that hogweed is edible. I’ve read about it causing problems here in the US, where it’s starting to appear, but I haven’t seen it yet. However, I always have work gloves in my backpack, so I’ll be happy to try it if I ever find it.
Have you seen my iOS/Android app, WildEdibles, yet? Since half our edibles come from your neck of the woods, it should be useful in Great Britain. And I now have a companion Wild Vegan Recipe app.
Happy Foraging!
“Wildman” Steve Brill
Hi, you all,
Of course the common european hogweed is edible, from roots to fruits. I enjoy in season the young shoots, leaves and leafstalks, young stems, flower buds and “seeds” in about a thousand different ways, both raw and cooked. No other vegetable, whether wild or cultivated, really matches it. And forget about these paranoid warnings, please : just put on long sleeves if the sun is out. No basic problem !