THYME
Thyme, or Thymus vulgaris, has gained a big popularity among the kitchens around the world, especially for flavoring meat or vegetable dishes. It is a standard part of a bouquet garni, used for flavoring stocks or soups. Thyme was used at least since the ancient Egyptians who used this herb for embalming their dead bodies. The ancient Greeks utilized this nice-smelling herb in their burnt sacrifices. Providing fragrance for the gods? Whatever the reason, the usage of thyme has been proven in kitchen, medicine, and in the ritual events!
You can usually buy fresh thyme all-year-round in a supermarket. Of course, you can also cultivate thyme in your home if you desire. There is also the dried form of thyme available, although its taste feels more intensive and aggressive and not at all fresh. The leaves of the thyme are small, oval, and slightly curled. When purchasing, look for fresh, green, not dried, thyme. Store the thyme in a refrigerator (you might want to wrap it into a foil or a bag, so the fragrance don't infuse into the other products you have in your fridge!).
There are actually many types of thyme, and they differ from each other in the subtle variations of flavors - lemon, orange, mint, oregano - they are all more or less dominating among the different types of thyme. Some thymes, including the one often used in the French cuisine, contains a widely used anti-bacterial oil called thymol. You may have used it on yourself actually, since it is not seldom included in mouth-hygienic products. Thymol, which resemehbles oregano as a flavor, provides a gentle but still notable touch of thyme, not as penetrable as oregano though. That's probably why thyme has become so popular.
To use thyme in cooking, make sure that you add it into the hot dish just at the end of cooking, since the heat will eventually lead to evaporation of the delicate thyme flavors (especially the volatile thymol). Otherwise, there's really not much to it. You can use thyme to flavor stocks, soups, stews, or other simmering dishes. A pasta sauce or scrambled eggs can also gain more "power" with thyme. And, as mentioned above, meat dishes are sometimes dying for a sprig of thyme.
Health benefits besides the anti-bacterial properties (that are nevertheless of minor importance if you eat thyme-d dishes) also include anti-oxidative protection of cell membranes. Scientists have shown that thymol can actually increase the amount of good fat content in the components of the cell membranes. Thyme also contains some other anti-oxidative flavonoids. Besides these benefits, thyme also carries high amounts of vitamin K, iron, and manganese.