How to use herbs

Hard and soft

Hard herbs

Rosemary, thyme, bay, oregano, sage, marjoram. Woody stems, tough leaves. Add early — they need time to release their flavour and they survive it.

Soft herbs

Parsley, coriander, basil, dill, chives, mint, tarragon, chervil. Tender leaves. Add at the very end, off the heat, or their aroma is simply driven off.

The test

If the stem is woody, it is a hard herb. If it is green and snaps, it is soft.

The exception

Soft herb stems — particularly coriander and parsley — are full of flavour and can go in early, with the leaves saved for the end.

Fresh against dried

Drying destroys the most volatile aroma compounds and concentrates what remains. For some herbs that is a fair trade and for others it is a disaster.

Dried oregano, bay, thyme, rosemary, marjoram and mint are all genuinely useful, and dried oregano is arguably better than fresh for Mediterranean cooking. Dried parsley, basil, coriander, dill and chives are close to pointless — the compounds that make them worth eating are exactly the ones that do not survive.

The rough conversion is one teaspoon dried to one tablespoon fresh, and dried herbs go in early where fresh ones of the same type might go in late — they need liquid and heat to rehydrate and release.

Dried herbs also lose strength on the shelf. If they smell of nothing when you crush them between your fingers, they will taste of nothing.

Getting more out of them

• Bruise or tear soft herbs rather than chopping finely. A very fine chop on a blunt knife crushes the leaves and much of the aroma ends up on the board.
• Add half early and half at the end, for herbs used in quantity. You get the base note and the fresh top note.
• Fry hard herbs in fat at the start — rosemary or sage in butter — which extracts the fat-soluble aromatics far more effectively than simmering in liquid.
• Crisp sage or curry leaves in hot oil for a few seconds. They become a garnish with real texture, and the oil is left flavoured.
• Use the stems. Parsley and coriander stems go into stocks and soffritto; thyme and rosemary stems can be tied in a bundle and lifted out.
• Salt-and-oil pastes — gremolata, salsa verde, chimichurri, pesto — are the best way to use a lot of soft herbs at once, and they keep.

Storing them

• Soft herbs — trim the stems and stand them in a glass of water like flowers, with a bag loosely over the top, in the fridge. They keep a week or more this way and a couple of days otherwise.
• Basil is the exception — it hates the cold and blackens in the fridge. Keep it on the worktop in water.
• Hard herbs — wrap loosely in a damp cloth or paper in the fridge. They keep for weeks.
• Freezing — chop soft herbs into ice cube trays with a little oil or water. Not the same as fresh, but far better than dried for parsley and coriander.
• Drying your own — works well for hard herbs, poorly for soft ones. Hang them somewhere warm, dark and airy.
• Growing a pot of parsley, chives, thyme and mint on a windowsill is more useful than any storage technique.

Common questions