1,534 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Herbs and temperature

I have already talked to you about herbs in cooking, and about their great power of "seduction". The example of a salad is a great classic: on its own, it's a salad, which is normal, but the same salad in which you have added finely chopped fresh herbs, just before serving, you have much more than a salad.

Herbs transcend recipes, small addition and big effect, with just a little chives, chervil, parsley, etc.

11 K 4.8/5 (16 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Herbs Cooking Temperature

Last modified on: April 25^th 2020

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Herbs and temperature

What if we heat it up? What about the herbs that we are going to consume after cooking (vs raw), it's a bit the same principle, we add them to a dish or a recipe, and they always make their little effect?

herbes en cuisson

Well it depends in fact, it depends on the herb itself or more exactly its active principle, its essential oil if you prefer, and which must pass from the herb in the dish for our greatest happiness.

And there attention, all the herbs are not equal, because the active ingredient they contain supports more or less well the heat.

estragon

Here is a specific example, tarragon, its active ingredient is estragol and unfortunately estragol evaporates at 50°C (approximately) which means that if you put it in a dish that goes in the oven for a long time, well it's almost useless because the taste will have evaporated during cooking and in the best case there will just be traces of it. Disappointing...

What to do?

All is not lost, it is enough to proceed differently, and to add the chosen herb at the last moment, the dish already taken out of the oven, and a few minutes before serving. This way you will have the expected taste, and in addition a certain freshness of taste due to the fresh herbs added. This is especially true for herbs that are very sensitive to heat: chives, tarragon and chervil in particular.

It is a little less true for parsley which is less sensitive to heat, and can be cooked better.

Another way to do it is to combine the 2 methods: herbs at the beginning for more nuanced notes, and herbs at the end for fresher and more pronounced notes.

Does this apply to all herbs?

No, there are some that have an active principle with a very high evaporation temperature (like 250°C), but with those you can go ahead and let it simmer or infuse for a long time: bay leaf, thyme and vanilla for example.

To sum up: For a recipe with herbs, and depending on the herbs, it is often better to incorporate the herbs at the end of cooking, chopped up at the minute.

Lasts posts

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 2025584

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20252,1175

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20257,1663

The grease spray

As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26^th 20256,6835

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,7225

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The little trap of thick cream

When you need to add cream to a recipe, you might be wondering: thick (heavy) cream or liquid cream? In most cases, there's no big difference: you can use either. But there is one exception, and that's when the cream needs to be cooked, for a sauce for example, and here the difference between...
December 13^th 20247,1775

Artichoke stalks

When preparing artichokes for cooking, you may well already know that we often need to remove the first round of leaves, if they are tatty or dirty, as well as the inedible stalk. The operative word here is “remove” , rather than “cut off”.
October 25^th 201653 K4.3

Drawing a pattern in pastry

Often in the kitchen, in pastry-making, or in baking, we need to trace a pattern on a pastry. It's just a question of aesthetics but it has its effect after baking on a galette, pithiviers, pâté en croute (terrine in a pie crust), etc.
May 23^th 201934 K4.1

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202033 K4.4

Pastry doughs

To make a classic tart, you'll need a pastry of course, and if you don't use puff pastry (normally reserved for "fine", in french, tarts), you'll have a choice of shortcrust, shortbread, sweetcrust or "à foncer". Let's take a look at the differences between these four.
August 16^th 20248,4534.4