Now you should cook the nettle soup.
The combination of nettle soup, egg and grated cheese works great. Sauli Kemppainen
Top chef Sauli Kemppainen doesn’t understand why no one collects the free superfood in the forests and fields that you can’t even buy in the store.
– It’s a wonder, by the way, that you can’t get nettles in stores – at least not in regular grocery stores, Kemppainen reflects.
Nettle soup is one of his classic dishes. It belongs to Kemppainen’s top 5 soups.
In Kemppainen’s opinion, the soup is so good that it is also on the menu of his Atelier7 restaurant under the name Nokkonen + Emmental 55mm. Kemppainen promises that the soup will be on the menu until Midsummer.
Sauli Kemppainen’s previous restaurant was the Michelin-awarded Savu in Berlin. Tommi Anttonen
In the restaurant, Kemppainen uses Swiss Emmental aged for 55 months.
– It has an incredibly fine and strong taste. At home, however, you can use available Emmental cheese. For example, Mustaleima fits very well. If the cheese has body, character and aroma, it’s always better.
The chef knows where the ingredients come from, because on Saturday he spent three hours in the forest collecting nettles.
Whenever nettle is available, Kemppainen plans to use it in many ways.
He relies on the popularity of nettle soup. Everyone loves it:
– I have yet to meet a child who doesn’t like soup.
According to Kemppainen, it’s always a tough recognition when it comes to food. Children either like it or not, but they express their opinions honestly.
Sauli Kemppainen collected a large amount of nettles over the weekend. Sauli Kemppainen
Sale nettle soup + Emmental cheese
50 g normal salted butter
50 g of the green part of the leek, cut into small pieces
1 crushed garlic clove
6 dl vegetable broth
2 dl whipped cream (35% fat)
½ tsp salt
a pinch of sugar
a pinch of ground nutmeg
a pinch of ground black pepper
a few leaves of fresh tarragon
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
30 g of grated Emmental cheese, preferably well-ripened and strongly flavored
200 g of crushed nettles (well-rinsed nettles are placed in boiling water for 30 seconds, cooled in as cold water as possible and squeezed dry)
As a side dish to the soup:
boiled egg
Emmental cheese in small pieces
fresh tarragon
1. Melt butter in a pot, saute leek and garlic in it for a few minutes.
2. Add the other ingredients without the nettle and Emmental and let it boil for approx. 10 minutes.
3. Finally, add emmental and crushed nettle. Let it boil for another couple of minutes.
4. Puree until smooth, e.g. with a stick blender or a blender.
5. Cook the eggs in boiling water until desired doneness (approx. 6–8 minutes). Cool, peel and split the eggs.
6. Grate emmental cheese on top of the egg halves, also put a few sprigs of fresh tarragon to give more dimension and serve them as a side dish to the hot soup.