Who's afraid of herbs?

Part 1 of many...yup there will be a few because there's so much to explore!

As I’ve started dipping my toes into the waters of trying new foods, expanding my palate, and just general adulting, I’ve noticed there’s some things that I would never have thought of using in my meals or eating in vast quantities when I was younger. But now I’m finding things like using herbs to be a delight. So I thought maybe we should work on our fear of using them in our recipes together.

Now don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a glass houses and stone throwing kind of article, I also (maybe like you?) did not grow up eating a lot of herbs in my food. You know that piece of parsley that was on your plate, yeah, that went back to the kitchen of the restaurant when your meal was done. You didn’t dare touch it! 

Herbs and even spice use was always a pinch or a dash, never a handful or a bunch. But I have learned over the years something quite fantastic, and that is using a lot of herbs in your recipes can be such a super fantastic addition. Plus some incredible health benefits . So let’s dive into it!

Now first things first, when Jason and I sat down and actually started talking about which herbs we wanted to cover in this article I suggested we do cilantro, parsley, basil, and, mint. But then he’s, “Oh, I remember as a kid picking dill from the side of the house”. And then we started just talking about all the other herbs in our lives and he asks, “What about chives?” and then I had a story about the first time I ever had chives which wasn’t until 2010 when I lived in Canmore - and he guffawed out loud (I didn’t even know what they were until my roommate told me to make sure to eat the chives in the backyard while he was away.  I had to look them up, go outside and look at them, and then ask my neighbour what the heck was I supposed to do with them?) And then I pulled out The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs by Padma Lakshmi and realized there was SO MUCH to write about, so we decided that we should do this as a multi part series because it’d be fun to kind of deep dive into some of these herbs and give everyone an opportunity to try them out in bigger quantities than you might be used to.

 For this article let’s start with some of the things that will help you be successful with herbs. From buying to storage and a few fun facts as well. And then in our subsequent parts we will actually get into the individual herbs in a little bit more detail because of course us being the science people that we are we realized there’s some really cool things that you might not know. 

Herbs vs. Spices

Before we go any further, I just realized we should probably define what an herb is because it is different from a spice.  Herbs are typically the fresh or dried leaves from plants and they can be used to flavour foods, in medicinal applications, and for fragrance.  Think of the above examples that we’re going to deep dive into but also lavender, thyme, and tarragon.  Whereas a spice is usually from other parts of the plant like the seeds, bark, roots, fruits, or flowers.  Often we find them most useful when used in their dried or ground forms.  Examples you say, give us some!  Cinnamon bark, nutmeg seed, ginger root, clove flowers, and black pepper fruit!  Now, to make things ridiculous and confusing - some plants have dual roles, ooof and different names!  Back to our friend cilantro - that is the herb but its seeds are coriander, the spice!  And, in some culinary traditions they use blends of herbs and spices to create complex flavours like Indian garam masala.

Buying Herbs

So if you’re buying herbs, what is the best way to do it? There are a lot of providers that have fresh herbs for sale. And in the summertime, farmers’ markets are one of the best places to go and get them. Now if you don’t have a local farmers’ market, you can typically find herbs in bunches at the grocery store. Maybe you’ve never noticed it before, but they actually are there; they just sometimes look half dead! (Editor’s Note: The best resource is always the vendors at farmer’s markets and  we obviously love Thistle Hill farms, but have we told you about Reclaim Organics??!! Reclaim is another favourite farmer to buy from and you can find them at many farmers markets throughout the week. We’ll do an entire article on them - a farm visit is in our future!)

Storing Herbs

Storing herbs once you get home, this was something that Jason and I spoke about because there can be a certain paranoia when you come home after buying a lot of fresh items and suddenly you’re thinking how the heck are you going to eat all of this? Or you’ve just got one recipe that “needs” fresh herbs, Now what?  

So when I looked up some of the herbs that we’re gonna talk about in subsequent articles, here’s what you want to remember:

Now, if you decide you want to buy a lot of herbs because you want to take advantage of great seasonal savings during peak growing season you can actually preserve the herbs so that you have them available throughout the year to use in salads, sauces, stews, dressings, and rubs/marinades on different meat to vegetarian dishes - sweet applications too, really the sky's the limit. There’s a few ways you can do that…

If we want to make sure that we’re using them quickly, the following is a salad that is quite delicious and has a lot of good benefits such as getting a lot of greens in you, but also heavy metal detoxifying help from the cilantro and the parsley. How cool is that? Cilantro and parsley are typically named some of the top detoxifying foods out there. And, if you’re thinking whoa that’s a lot of herbs in there, trust me it works and the flavours together are a delight!

Another cool thing is that some herbs can regenerate. So if you want fresh herbs all the time it’s pretty easy even if you are in a small living space; just have a small pot with basil, mint, parsley, or cilantro. You can just pick a little of each or trade off as you’re cooking and you’ll always have some available.

No Waste Kitchen

We always like to include a no-waste kitchen tidbit for everyone. Here are a few great no-waste things to know:

- Cilantro and parsley. Psst: you can eat the stems. A lot of people just pick the leaves off and don’t eat the stems. But the stems add a nice crunchy component to your dish and then you don’t have any waste.

- Also for mint and basil those stems are quite a bit more woody, don’t throw them out, save them and when you’re making any soups, stews, chili, or pasta sauce or anything like that, put the stems in there and they will add great flavor. Maybe right before serving, you just fish out the stems just like with a bayleaf.

That’s a great start!!  The next parts of the series we’ll go into more details focusing on cool stuff like which herb is full of Vitamin A (eye health), how Jason broke a few recumbent bikes while learning to taste herbs and spices plus what the heck were Simon and Garfunkel on about in their song Scarborough Fair?  Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme…don’t even pretend you didn’t sing while reading that! Lots of people have heard that cilantro tastes like soap is actually a genetic thing but did you know it can be the same thing with mangos?[JMC] And did you know that basil can come in a whole bunch of cool varieties like Thai, lemon or cinnamon basil? Has anyone tried lemon basil, because we just tried it last week and it’s quite tasty! Also, let us know if there is a herb you’d love for us to cover including if you want a recipe for any of them!

Until next thyme!