Don’t let your kitchen become a battleground for rigid culinary snobbery and the endless debate over dried herbs vs. fresh herbs. Some “culinary experts” insist that dried herbs are a crime against cooking, but your taste buds likely tell a different story. In a perfect world, we’d all have a lovely herb garden at our fingertips, but the reality is that dried herbs aren’t just a backup plan. They can actually be the superior choice depending on what you’re cooking. If you’re making a recipe calling for fresh herbs and all you have is a jar of dried, don’t panic. You can easily master how to substitute dried herbs for fresh. Not only is it simple, but it allows you to pack your food with flavor even if you can’t get to the grocery store right away.
How Cooking With Dried Herbs Changes Their Flavor
The flavor in herbs doesn’t come from water, which is mostly what is lost in the drying process. They come from aromatic oils and other flavor compounds. Depending on the plant, some of the oils might be lost in the drying process along with the water because they evaporate right along with the water.
These volatile oils can also react to light, oxygen, or moisture in the air. Some herbs just don’t stand up to drying very well at all, and will end up tasting like dried grass, if not worse. Others, like most members of the mint family (although not all), including the oregano, thyme, and rosemary we often use, stand up to drying very well. Other herbs that dry well are bay and sage.
It is generally reported that chives, basil, parsley, tarragon, cilantro, and chervil, all herbs with softer leaves, don’t dry well. However, I’ve used all of these in the past, with some success, except for parsley, which tends to have almost no flavor when dried.
Some of the success of herb drying can be attributed to the process used to dry them. Not all ways of drying herbs are equal.
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Different Herb Drying Processes
Basically, the more gentle the drying process, the less flavor is lost. Sun drying is probably worse than shade-drying, not only because of the heat but because the light, including ultraviolet light, can greatly affect the flavor. Hight heat oven drying is much too harsh, of course.
Modern technology has moved far beyond sun-drying. Research on herb drying methods shows that specialized techniques like freeze-drying better protect the plant’s trichomes, the microscopic glands where essential oils are stored. By keeping these structures intact, these methods retain a much higher percentage of aromatic compounds than traditional heat-heavy processes
The reality of drying, however, is that it is not a perfect process that preserves every single flavor characteristic as it is found in the fresh plant. Some flavors will be lost. But, the loss of most of the water will cause those flavors that remain to be concentrated!
This means that the dried herb might taste somewhat different than its fresh counterpart, but the resultant flavor is much stronger.
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Herbs That Dry Well
Typically, the less tender herbs with tough leaves or woody stems dry well. For example, herbs like rosemary, oregano, lavender, and thyme. These types of herbs don’t have a lot of water in their leaves and are full of essential oils. Bay leaves dry well, too, but they are the leaves of a tree, so do not fall into the typical herb category.
Herbs That Don’t Dry Well
More delicate herbs with soft stems tend to not dry well, losing some or even most of their flavor. If you’ve ever heard a chef trashing dried parsley and calling it, well, trash, this is because parsley retains almost no flavor at all when dried!
Some herbs that do not dry as well are basil, chervil, chives, cilantro, lovage, marjoram, and thyme. These are herbs that have a lot of water in their stems and leaves, so they are very difficult to dry in the first place. Not only do they not retain much of their flavor when dried, but they may retain too much of certain flavors while losing others, causing the results to be undesirable. This is why I recommend, below, to start with a minimum amount and add more as you taste, to avoid a disagreeable flavor. Just because an herb is weaker when dried doesn’t mean you should dump in more of it. It’s not just that these herbs are weaker; they simply dry badly and are “not themselves” as a result.
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Dried Mint: An Exception to the Soft Herb Rule
While high-heat drying methods, as mentioned above, typically shatter the trichomes of soft herbs, the Mint family (Lamiaceae) possesses a unique chemical resilience. This is why a dried mint leaf can still pack a punch in a tea or a stew, even after losing its fresh, vibrant appearance.
If you’ve ever had mint tea made with dried mint leaves, you probably realized that it has plenty of mint flavor. So, mint is an exception to the rule. It does have soft delicate leaves but it dries pretty well.
Oddly enough, most of the familiar cooking herbs, including most of those above, are in the mint family but this is no indication of how well they stand up to drying. When I say mint here, of course, I am referring to those herbs that have “mint” in their name, such as spearmint.
When Dried Herbs Are Useful
Recipes call for dried herbs for specific reasons. If a recipe tells you to add a dried herb at the beginning, but you substitute, say, 3 times as much of the fresh herb, thinking this will give superior results, you may end up killing any flavor the herb would have imparted.
On the other hand, if you are clever enough to add fresh herbs at the end, the recipe still may not have the flavor that was intended.
Can we say that fresh herbs taste better than dried ones? Yes. Absolutely, I’d go along with that statement. I would also agree that whenever possible, the use of fresh herbs is going to make your food better. But, it is not just the initial flavor of an ingredient that determines the taste of our dish, but the properties it has in cooking.
Dried herbs stand up to longer cooking times and take longer for the flavors to be extracted. Generally, you want to add dried herbs at the beginning of cooking, to give time for the flavors to be extracted. On the other hand, you’re usually better off adding fresh herbs towards the end.
Using Dried Herbs for Dry Rubs and Slow Cooking
A good example of a cooking method where dried herbs, along with spices, will be superior, and preferred, is in a dry rub for meats that will be slow-cooked, for example, in a smoker. This is why it is called a dry-rub.
For example, you can use a mixture of so-called Herbes de Provence to make a dried herb rub for general use on meats, fish, or to season stews. Include herbs such as marjoram, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, oregano, mint, chervil, bay, or savory. Dried herbs are also used often in compound butters or marinades. Cajun cooking, some of the most well-loved food in America, uses a lot of dried herbs.
One Problem With Fresh Herbs
One problem with fresh herbs is that they do not stand up well to long cooking processes. You may have heard, for instance, that when using fresh herbs, you should add some at the beginning and end of a preparation that requires a longer cooking time. This is because the flavor from fresh herbs is extracted quickly, and as the cooking process continues, you can lose some of this flavor, or have it altered by the cooking process itself.
Putting basil in a pasta sauce and stewing it for hours may not deliver the basil flavor you expected. Also, if you cook fresh herbs too long, all their color will be lost.
This is why you often see fresh basil being added at the last minute, if not being used as a topping to be broken down by the eater (fresh basil tastes great and does not benefit from prolonged cooking).
Sometimes, leaving the herb as whole as possible, instead of chopping it finely, may help. But if the cooking process is long enough, and if there is no way to effectively use fresh herbs to render more fresh herb flavor toward the end of the cooking time, dried herbs may be superior.
You Can Use Both Dried and Fresh Herbs in the Same Recipe!
Some sources are so hung up on the fresh versus dried herbs debate that they create a dichotomy: You will either use fresh herbs in your cooking or substitute dried herbs if you are ignorant, vulgar, or desperate.
Since dried herbs work well to impart flavor during long cooking processes and fresh herbs are great for a fresh burst of flavor toward the end both can and should be used for reinforcing flavor. Starting with a dried herb at the beginning of cooking and adding some fresh herb at the end will bring in a fresh, vibrant taste and will often yield better results.
But, as many attest, sometimes dried herbs are no substitute. As a general rule, if a recipe calls for a large amount of fresh herb, meaning it relies on the herb for most of its flavor, dried herbs will never work at all. This should be a bit obvious, though. You could never make pesto with dried basil, after all.
Even when a recipe calls for a dried herb to be added at the beginning of cooking, and no fresh herb, you can add fresh at the need to accentuate the flavor and aroma of this herb in the dish.
Cooking is a creative process, so use your judgment, and most of all, your taste buds. The fact that cooking is a creative process should disabuse you from accepting any rules that condemn certain ingredients over others. Dried herbs will generally do well in stewed dishes such as pasta sauce, chili, soups, or stews, and it is not always necessary to use fresh herbs at the end.
Herb Substitution and Quality Guide
Further Reading
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