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Cooking with Fresh Herbs

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Herbs are a wonderful way to add healthy flavor and vibrancy to any dish. If you are trying to cut down on salt or add some nonfat flavor to your food, fresh herbs are just what you need. A great way to boost the flavor of a sauce or salad!

I’ve come up with some tips for storing and cooking with herbs to make your life a little easier and much more flavorful.

Storing:

  1. Spring herbs such as tarragon, dill, parsley, mint and basil are a bit more fragile with thin leaves, compared to heartier herbs such as sage, rosemary, and thyme. They need to be treated with care!
  2. Buy only the freshest smelling and brightest colored herbs.
  3. Trim the ends and put the bunch in a jar of cold water, cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
  4. Or wrap the herb bundle in damp paper towel and put in the fridge in a zip lock baggie.

Cooking:

  1. Always taste your herbs before adding them to your dish, as flavor and potency can vary.
  2. With more fragile herbs such as basil, tarragon, dill, and mint add them in at the end of cooking to preserve their flavor
  3. Treat them kindly, snip with scissors or tear with your hands, rough chopping with a knife can bruise the fragile leaves and damage flavor.
  4. Heartier woodier herbs like rosemary, thyme and sage are stronger in flavor and need to be chopped well and can withstand longer cooking times
  5. Garnish! A sprinkling of herbs on top can make any dish pop on the plate!

I’ve always grown an abundance of herbs in my home garden, and I must say, some of my best cooking is done with herbs that I am able to snip just before adding to the dish. Try some of these wonderful recipes celebrating the flavor of springtime herbs:

So, whether you are following specific recipes or simply sprinkling some basil on baked chicken, make fresh herbs your go to culinary secret of spring!

Paula Deen - As a young girl growing up in Albany, Georgia, Paula Deen never dreamed she would become an American icon. As a young mother, Paula was living the American dream — married to her high school sweetheart and raising two adorable boys — when tragedy struck. Her parents died, her marriage failed and she began a prolonged battle with agoraphobia. With her boys in their teens and her family near homelessness, Paula took her last $200, reached deep inside her soul and started The Bag Lady, a home-based catering company that marked the start of Deen's professional cooking career. With sons Jamie and Bobby delivering lunch-and-love-in-a-bag, beginning in June 1989, Paula turned her life around by sharing what she knew best, traditional Southern cooking.

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