I love entertaining. When I have people in my home, I love feeding them and finding out what makes them tick. I also love teaching. So, entertaining is a great time to learn about other people’s successes and challenges in the kitchen. I can often anticipate questions and provide answers, but it’s incredible how so many of us think we’re an island! Let me assure you – almost all of us struggle with creating quick, tasty meals for picky husbands, kids and wives! Our lives are very parallel!!
One question that often comes up in my clean cooking classes is, ‘how and when do I use herbs and spices?’ Great question! Believe it or not, ‘how and when’ matter when trying to achieve the best flavours. In professional kitchens, food is created using fresh herbs and spices in just about every dish around the globe. These game changers can help create a sense of familiarity when re-creating flavors at home, whether from a childhood recipe or a favourite family restaurant.
Here are a few tips, from my kitchen to yours.
Herbs: where to start?
Some herbs are delicate and work best when added at the end of a meal. If added at the beginning of the cooking process, softer herbs like tarragon, basil and cilantro will lose their flavour by the time you serve your dish. Instead, finish your meals with these herbs. For a flavour explosion, chop them up and sprinkle them over your finished dishes just before serving!
Heartier herbs like, thyme and rosemary can stand up to longer cooking methods like braising and roasting. Adding the whole herb allows me to remove it when I feel it has imparted enough flavour. I’ll often add a whole sprig of thyme or rosemary when roasting a chicken, turkey or even cauliflower. It makes all the difference.
Herbs can also be pureed into a pesto and frozen to be available in a pinch!
How to use?
Different herbs have different flavours.
Tarragon has an amazing anise or licorice flavor which I mainly use in fish and seafood dishes. It’s also a wonderful accompaniment to vinaigrettes.
Basil, on the other hand, gets used in everything! It’s aromatic, and depending on my mood, I’ll add it chopped or whole. From everything to meat, chicken, fish and vegetable dishes. Basil finishes each dish with big flavour.
When it comes to cilantro, (a.k.a. coriander) I find there’s no middle ground. You either love it or hate it! I happen to love it and I try to use it every chance I get. Cilantro not only garnishes my ‘Vegetable Quinoa Chili’ (see recipe) but it also gets used in tacos, lettuce wraps and anything else that has a southwest, Mexican, Asian or Spanish origin.
Cooks and chefs in top kitchens seem to always be making soups, stocks and sauces from herbs. They will often create a ‘bouquet garni’; a bundle of herbs, that are tied together and pack tons of flavour. These bouquets get added to large stock pots that boil away, throughout the day and often into night. The herbs are tied together to keep them whole, and to make their removal easy. If you were to add chopped herbs, you wouldn’t have the same control over the flavour profile which can impact the finished product.
Spice up your life
Every one of us has jars of ground or whole spices sitting in our pantry that we purchased some time ago. In some cases, I would bet those spices have been around for one, three or even five years. Come on, admit it. But here’s the good news; you can still bring them back to life!
Before using spices in marinades, dry rubs, soups, stews, braises or just about any application, I usually follow the same procedure; warm a sauce pan over medium heat and add the desired amount of whole or ground spices. Watch them closely as they can easily burn. Then using a wooden spoon, move the spices around until they become aromatic. As soon as you can smell the fragrant aroma, the spices are done. Transfer them to a plate and cool completely. You’ve brought your spices back to life by releasing their natural oils!
A little goes a long way
My ultimate goal when creating food for my family is to have the food reflect something we can enjoy and might have even enjoyed at a restaurant, at one time or another. I always try to create a sense of familiarity, which is why I use fresh herbs and spices.
The next time you make a chicken breast, add a sprig of rosemary. Or toast some cumin and coriander seed and add it to your chili. You’ll see that the flavour is more familiar than you think, and just a little can go a long, long way.
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