I absolutely love to cook, but sometimes I just need an easy, no fuss meal. I am a vegetarian and my husband is not, so I basically cook two meals every night. When it has been a really long day (week, month, year…), sometimes I just need dinner to be easy. That’s usually when we have roasted potatoes and veggies for dinner. I can just throw everything into one baking dish, season it up, and toss it in the oven and an hour-ish later, we have dinner. On these nights, I usually put a pork chop or chicken breast in a separate baking dish with some BBQ sauce for my husband.
I had been doing this for many years before I started studying to become a clinical herbalist. During my studies, I learned the healing benefits of nettle and my mind was blown! It has tons of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. It is very high in calcium, vitamin A, vitamin K, iron, and manganese. It even has a little protein! Adding this little herb into as much stuff as you can will up your nutrient intake by a lot and it really doesn’t have that much flavor on its own so you can throw it into just about everything. This is how my Super Nutritious Herb Blend came to be. You can find more about this herb’s benefits here.
In this basic nutritious herb blend, the only other ingredients are salt and pepper, but you can add whatever strikes your fancy. I typically use fresh garlic when I’m cooking, but you could certainly add garlic powder to this blend. Other fun additions are substituting smoked sea salt for plain salt. This will significantly change the flavor, but it will certainly be yummy. For my roasted potatoes and veggies, I love to add rosemary to this blend as well. Rosemary also has tons of health benefits. You can get more information here.
So now, I keep some of my Super Nutritious Herb Blend on-hand at all times and just sprinkle it on everything. It is particularly nice on roasted potatoes and veggies. I chop up onions, potatoes, fresh garlic, broccoli, carrots, and whatever else I have on hand, toss it all with some EVOO, add a very, extremely, large handful of my herb blend, and bake it all for a good hour. DELICIOUS! Make sure to “spice it like you mean it” to get all that good stuff.
This blend can be added to pretty much any savory meal, but my favorites are soups, stews, shepherd’s pie, and marinara sauce. You can purchase all of the herbs you need for this recipe in my online herb shop here.
Super Nutritious Herb Blend
Equipment
- 1 Mortar & Pestle or herb grinder
- 1 Container for storing
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup dried nettles
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper (or your favorite color)
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a mortar and pestle or an herb grinder and grind until desired consistency.
- Place in a glass herb jar or other storage container and label.