The blog of cooking-ez.com
Rosemary in recipes
Rosemary, as I’m sure you know, is a culinary herb, one of the famous French "herbes de Provence", and is very effective in bringing a real taste of the Mediterranean to any dish.
The classic way to use it in a recipe is to add a sprig or two and leave it in during cooking as a way of capturing the full flavour.
The classic way to use it in a recipe is to add a sprig or two and leave it in during cooking as a way of capturing the full flavour.
15K 3 3.7
Last modified on: April 18th 2018
Keywords for this post:RosemaryHerbsProvenceFranceUseRecipesTasteRosemary in recipes
But with rosemary there are two slight problems:
1) Rosemary, rather like bay leaves, is difficult to eat. The thick stem is usually woody and hard, and the needle-like leaves are tough, even after cooking.
2) After they have been cooking for a while, the leaves fall off the stem and get mixed into the dish. They are not ideal to eat, as I was saying, so can be unpleasant when they end up in a mouthful. Trying to sort them out of the food is an irksome task.
With such drawbacks, one might be forgiven for wanting to give up using rosemary all together, but that would be a pity, as the flavour is so good. Fortunately, there’s a solution…
The trick is a simple one, and it’s this: imagine you are making a tomato sauce, as you might knock up in advance for home-made pizzas (a real must!). Midway through cooking, once the tomatoes start to look like a proper sauce, add the sprig(s) of rosemary as planned and leave in the sauce – but only for five minutes, then remove and discard.
This will give your sauce plenty of rosemary flavour, but without leaving the nasty hard bits of herb mentioned above. Five minutes may not sound like very long, but it’s enough, as you will see.
You can do the same with thyme, but this is less necessary, as the leaves are very small and quite easy to eat.
If you are not making a sauce, but cooking meat, for example, the method is even simpler: just rub the rosemary over the meat. This might seem odd or inadequate, but it really is enough – try it out for yourself.
To sum up: When using sprigs of rosemary in a recipe, just rub over the food, or leave in the pan while cooking for no longer than five minutes.
1) Rosemary, rather like bay leaves, is difficult to eat. The thick stem is usually woody and hard, and the needle-like leaves are tough, even after cooking.
2) After they have been cooking for a while, the leaves fall off the stem and get mixed into the dish. They are not ideal to eat, as I was saying, so can be unpleasant when they end up in a mouthful. Trying to sort them out of the food is an irksome task.
With such drawbacks, one might be forgiven for wanting to give up using rosemary all together, but that would be a pity, as the flavour is so good. Fortunately, there’s a solution…
The trick is a simple one, and it’s this: imagine you are making a tomato sauce, as you might knock up in advance for home-made pizzas (a real must!). Midway through cooking, once the tomatoes start to look like a proper sauce, add the sprig(s) of rosemary as planned and leave in the sauce – but only for five minutes, then remove and discard.
This will give your sauce plenty of rosemary flavour, but without leaving the nasty hard bits of herb mentioned above. Five minutes may not sound like very long, but it’s enough, as you will see.
You can do the same with thyme, but this is less necessary, as the leaves are very small and quite easy to eat.
If you are not making a sauce, but cooking meat, for example, the method is even simpler: just rub the rosemary over the meat. This might seem odd or inadequate, but it really is enough – try it out for yourself.
To sum up: When using sprigs of rosemary in a recipe, just rub over the food, or leave in the pan while cooking for no longer than five minutes.
Lasts posts
The right bread knife
We almost all have a bread knife in our kitchen, that is to say the knife we use almost exclusively to cut bread. Is this knife efficient, is it really the one you need? Here is some information to guide you in your choice. .2,574 September 15th 2022
Parmesan cheese crusts
If you use Parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano) in your recipes, you may have already noticed: when you grate it, it becomes (very) difficult near the crust, especially if it is a slightly aged parmesan, as the cheese gets harder and harder. So we stop grating, leaving some crust on top, and a...5,4784.6 September 14th 2022
The gelling agent in a cream
If you start making a Bavarian cream for example, or any other that contains a gelling agent such as gelatin or agar-agar, you will sooner or later be confronted with the problem: How to properly incorporate this gelling agent into my cream? (and we will focus on gelatin).4,8984.9 June 18th 2022
The preservation of bread
Eating fresh bread is always a delight, the crust crumbles deliciously, you take full advantage of the taste of your bread (80% of this taste is in the crust), it is a fleeting moment to enjoy. Who hasn't already eaten the crouton or croutons of his baguette, on the way back from the bakery? ...5,8353 June 11th 2022
Beans in primeur
As I write this, it is the beginning of the short season for fresh beans. If you've never made them before and you're just starting out (and that's a great idea) you'll find that it's a bit time consuming to prepare, you have to shell them once, remove the beans, scald them to remove the skin (and...4,796 June 4th 2022
Other pages you may also like
Making the most of seeds: Dry roasting
In cooking, and particularly in baking, there are a lot of seeds we can use, such as linseed, sesame, poppy, etc. Usually, recipes simply say to add them just as they are to the mixture or dough. To make a seeded loaf, for example, prepare a plain bread dough as usual, then, towards the end of...47K3.2 January 30th 2015
What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?
This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .100K 13.9 February 7th 2017
A few tips for effective kneading at home
When you have to knead dough for bread or some other recipe, you may well use a food processor or the type of machine known as a stand mixer. The best-known brands are Kenwood and KitchenAid. They are useful tools, but here are a few tips to help you get the best out of them.239K 23.4 June 23th 2021
The baker always gild twice
I've already told you about gilding, the beaten whole egg that is spread with a brush on anything that needs to brown in the oven: puff pastry, pastries, etc. and that professionals use a lot, I'm going to come back to this to clarify a bit how to do it, and give you a professional tip.18K3.9 June 9th 2019
Different kinds of pastry and dough
When cooking in general, and particularly in baking, we can make and use many different kinds of pastry and dough. All built on the same "base": flour - a powder to which we add fat, liquid or both to produce the dough which is then cooked. .98K 13.6 November 6th 2012
Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.