The blog of cooking-ez.com

Rosemary in recipes


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.
19K 4.7/5 based on 15 reviews
Grade this page:

Last modified on: April 18th 2018

Keywords for this post:RosemaryHerbsProvenceFranceUseRecipesTaste
Rosemary 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.

rosemary in a recipe



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.

Meat with rosemary



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 different cooking modes
The different cooking modes
In cooking, cooking means bringing food into contact with a source of heat, to transform it: improving its taste, and sometimes its texture. This contact with the heat source can be achieved in a number of ways: these are the cooking methods, and let's take a look at the main ones.
4965 July 24th 2024
Clean your mixer easily
Clean your mixer easily
If you use a "bowl" or "blender" mixer, as opposed to a plunger, you've probably noticed that it's a bit of a hassle to clean it after use. And yet, with a simple trick, it can be done very quickly. See how here.
1,8435 June 26th 2024
Preserving egg yolks
Preserving egg yolks
If you're using only the egg whites in a recipe (such as meringues ), you'll need to store the yolks until you're ready to use them again. There's nothing very complicated about this in principle - all you have to do is chill them, but there are a few pitfalls to be avoided in practice.
2,3185 June 18th 2024
Preservative oil, an asset for taste
Preservative oil, an asset for taste
When you prepare a dish using an ingredient that has been preserved in fat, for example a springtime mixed salad with tuna in oil or sun-dried tomatoes, you're probably going to make a french dressing (vinaigrette) next. In that case, why not use the preserved oil from the tuna or tomatoes?
2,4615 June 5th 2024
Don't throw away disposable piping bags
Don't throw away disposable piping bags
Nowadays, it's fairly easy to find what professionals use as piping bags, i.e. disposable or "single-use" plastic ones. They're practical, functional and inexpensive, but disposable? That's debatable...
3,8615 May 28th 2024
Other pages you may also like
A few tips for effective kneading at home
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.
268K 23.7 June 23th 2021
Candied fruits: don't get ripped off
Candied fruits: don't get ripped off
Do you like candied fruit? You might like to nibble a handful or add it to a recipe, like a classic fruit cake or delicious Italian specialities like panettone or sicilian epiphany pie.
54K 24.2 June 21th 2017
The golden-brown finish on puff pastry
The golden-brown finish on puff pastry
Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
40K 24.6 February 8th 2018
What can I use for blind baking a pastry case?
What can I use for blind baking a pastry case?
When it comes to home-made desserts, tarts are always popular. They can be divided into two basic types: those cooked with their filling, such as an apricot and almond cream tart, and those where the filling is added after baking the pastry case, such as a strawberry tart or chocolate tart. For...
105K4.5 May 2nd 2017
Sugar syrups
Sugar syrups
In cooking, and especially in pastry, we often use sugar syrups, a simple mixture of water and sugar in varying proportions. Here is a presentation of their differences. .
6,6374.8 January 17th 2023
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing
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.
I am not a leaving thing
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.

Back to top of page