Video:How to Cook with Herbs

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Transcript:How to Cook with Herbs

Hi, I'm Jesse Rosado for About.com and today we're going to be talking about how to cook with herbs.

Distinguishing Between Dried and Fresh Herbs

So you'll have two different styles of herbs that you'll have a chance to cook with. We have dried herbs, and these kind of herbs are really good for cooking when you want to give some flavor to something that's going to good for a long time. So you've got a pot roast in the slow cooker? You want to use your dried herbs for that.

The other kind of herb option is going to be your fresh herbs. And these are going to be more at the point where you're about to plate. Because the flavor's already there, they're already plenty hydrated.

Types of Herbs to Use in Cooking

This is some nice basil right here. We have some thyme, some mint. For example, this basil right here might be nice sprinkled over a plate of lasagna. So right here on the plate, we've got this long herb here. This is chives. Sour cream and chive mashed potatoes is a good one. You can put your chives to flavor up your cream sauce, your parmesan cream sauce, something like that.

You've got rosemary here. A lot of times, we use those in Italian dishes, to put into a marinara sauce, those kind of things. Rosemary also really works well with baking as well.Some other herbs - this is more French style cooking.

This is your basic thyme leaves. In the restaurants, I like to use the stems in my stocks, I get the nice thyme flavor in my stocks, my soups and things like that. Thyme leaf, fresh thyme leaf, I like to use in any kind of French sauce. A nice béarnaise sauce, I like to throw some thyme in there.

And the last herb I have here is mint. And mint can be used in savory dishes, but this is also very good for sweet dishes. Mint chocolate - it pairs very well with chocolate. Mint ice cream, you can put mint with strawberries, goes really well.

Chiffonade Cuts Are Useful When Cooking With Herbs

So now I'm going to show you an example of a chiffonade cut. I'm going to take my largest basil leaf, put it on the bottom. Put my second one in the middle. And my third one there. When we cut these, we'll really be able to open up the cell walls of this plant, it's going to extract a lot of flavor.

And also, this is a traditional French cut, so it's a little bit fancy as well. The way that you do is you fold it in about a third of the way, just like that, and then you start to roll it - kind of like a little cigar. Roll it up nice and tight. And then you go through, almost like a julienne style, just like that. That's nice to sprinkle on top of -- like I said, your lasagna, your linguini and meatballs, sprinkle some of that chiffonade basil right on top.

Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the web at About.com.