HOW TO USE SPICES AND HERBS IN COOKING
Herbs and spices are used to add extra flavour to the dish that already has more or less of its inert flavour. Usually, herbs and spices are used in very
small amount, since their aroma is so strongly concentrated. Their flavour needs to be extracted by cooking, or by putting some herb leaves on the finished dish and let our teeth do the job. Depending on what we want, we choose the strategy of flavour extraction. But let's talk about cooking as the means of
flavouring our dishes with herbs and spices. After all, this is the method that will give a wider distribution of the flavour within the dish.
There are four basic factors that extract the aromas from food. These are size, heat, liquid, and time. Smaller size, e.g. chopped leaves, will help
release the flavour quicker than intact leaves. However, this can be compensated for by heat and liquid, as well as time. Usually, the size that we choose
for our herbs and spices depends on how long time we cook our meals. If we want a quick release of flavour, we chop or crush the aromatic ingredients,
otherwise it is often preferable to leave them intact. We have to bear in mind though that the longer the cooking time, the less pronounced the herb or
spice could be (or more pronounced, depending on the nature of the ingredient). Anyway, if we taste our dish after having cooked it for a long time, and we
feel that the herbs or spices we added at the beginning are too subtle, we can always finish off with more fresh aromatics. Remember also that some aromas
are too volatile to be added right at the start of the dish preparation. For some ingredients, it is best to not throw them in until the last moment(s) of
cooking.
When it comes to liquid - many aromas are much more soluble in fat than in water, and so the extraction of the flavour is affected by how much butter or
oil we have in our dish. This is also one good reason to sauté onions and other aromatic ingredients in oil and not in water (duh!). However, many herbs and spices have water-soluble aromas, so water is okay to use. You need to live and learn which is best for each ingredient.
To finish this "lesson" off, let us describe a couple of common aromatic packets used in cooking: bouquet garni and sachet d'epices. A usual bouquet garni is a mix of fresh sprig of thyme, a few fresh parsley stems, a bay leaf, possibly a celery stalk, all wrapped up in a leek leave and tied up by a cotton string. Such a package can be added to a simmering stock at the final phases of cooking, or whatever time is needed to extract enough aroma. The point behind making a package of these ingredients and then throw it in into the pot is that you can easily control how much aroma will be released. Simply taste the stock at several occasions and determine when you have enough of the new flavour in it, then remove the bouqet packet.
Sachet d'epices is a package, made up of a few parsley stems, a couple of crushed peppercorns, a sprig of fresh thyme, a bay leaf, and maybe a clove of gently crashed garlic. These ingredients are packed into a cheesecloth bag (pretty similar to a tea bag, but bigger), tied up by a cotton string. This package is used in a similar way as a bouquet garni.
Now, some chefs don't care about making these tiny packages, they just throw in the ingredients into the stock and wait for some time before they strain it. That's one alternative, although you cannot really swiftly remove these aromatics when the flavour becomes too strong.