Nettle Fritters

During my many Covid-19 daily walks this spring, I’ve been seeing plenty of nettles. This prompted me to make some nettle risotto and while I was using nettles, I decided to also make some nettle fritters.

These nettle fritters are really quick and easy to make and absolutely delicious. Light, incredibly crisp and definitely “una tira l’altra”, as we say in Italian (translates as “each one pulls the next”, i.e. you want to keep eating more of them!). They are a perfect snack or starter 🙂

Important when making nettle fritters:

Nettles will give you a nasty rash (urticaria) if you touch them, so when picking them and handling them prior to cooking, wear long sleeves, long trousers, socks & shoes that cover your feet completely. Also wear gloves! Once they are cooked, they are absolutely safe to touch and eat.

Nettle fritters ingredients:

I don’t have any precise quantities for you here but it really is very easy to make this recipe by just throwing the ingredients together. As for how many nettle leaves you need – it depends how many fritters you want to make!

• Nettle leaves (as many as you want). I picked the top 2-3 leaf layers off each nettle plant by cutting the stem with scissors below the 2nd or 3rd layer of leaves, taking care to get plants whose leaves were in good condition and not too huge…also I went into the nettles to avoid getting the ones right on the edge of the path.
• Olive oil or vegetable oil for frying
• Equal quantities of plain white flour and cornflour
• Cold water (the colder, the better)
• Fine sea salt

How to make the nettle fritters

Wash the nettles (carefully – wear gloves!) and remove the leaves from the stalks, keeping only the leaves.

Heat the oil in a saucepan or fryer – you need enough in there to be able to deep fry the nettle leaves, but as long as you only fry a few at a time, you don’t need a huge pan or vast amounts of oil. You want to get the oil hot enough that when you drop a little bit of batter or a small piece of bread in, it starts frying but doesn’t go dark too quickly as the leaves will need time to cook.

Meanwhile, make a fairly runny batter by roughly mixing the flour, cornflour, water and seasoning generously with sea salt.

Still wearing gloves, take one nettle leaf at a time, dip it in the batter to fully coat it and drop it into the hot oil. Repeat with a few more leaves, taking care not to put too many into the frying oil at once as you don’t want them sticking together. Fry the leaves for 2-3 minutes until they are golden in colour and crispy. As you take them out, place them on a couple of folded pieces of kitchen roll to absorb the excess oil.

Serve while they are still warm and crispy.

Nettle Fritters – Gloriously Simple, Gloriously Good!