When to Add Herbs to Dishes: Simple Rules of Experienced Hostesses

Here you will find universal recommendations for when and in what form it is best to add dill, parsley, or other herbs to the first dishes.

Greens not only decorate dishes and saturate them with vitamins, but also give them a certain and sometimes even specific taste. Therefore, it is important for any hostess to understand when to add greens to borscht, how much to cook dill, or in what form parsley is added to the soup to achieve the desired result.

What greens are added to soup – a list

Of course, the most popular among all the greens are dill, parsley, and green onions. However, many housewives are not limited to them. As seasonings are often added to soups in the dry or fresh form:

  • basil;
  • sorrel;
  • coriander;
  • celery;
  • mint.

It all depends on what kind of result you want to get. For example, in mushroom soup, in addition to dill and parsley, it is still appropriate to add dried basil. And to saturate the unique flavor of chicken or fish soup, mint is perfect.

When to add greens to soup and borscht – what is important to know

It is believed that greens in dishes perform another important function, namely – helping the body to assimilate the products. That’s why experts advise using fresh herbs more often and adding them to the dishes already before serving them at the table. In this form, they are really the most useful.

However, this does not mean that the dried greens lose all their properties, not counting, of course, their taste. This is far from it. If we talk about when it is most appropriate to add it to dishes, the optimal time is 5-10 minutes before the end of cooking.

It can also be called wrong the belief that after cooking, fresh herbs become absolutely useless. And when the borscht or soup is cooked with the calculation of portions for several days, it is even recommended to boil the dish for a couple more minutes after adding the greens at the end. In this way, it is guaranteed that it will not sour quickly.

How long to boil dill – useful tips

Given that dill is the most popular of all herbs, it doesn’t hurt to remember a couple of simple rules about it.

First, fresh dill does not need a long heat treatment in order to sufficiently saturate the dish with its flavor, he does not tolerate it, as it really loses its useful properties. Therefore, fresh dill should be cooked for 1-2 minutes at most.

Secondly, dried dill, like other greens in dry form, should also be added to the dish at the very end of cooking, but 5-10 minutes before taking it off the fire.

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Written by Emma Miller

I am a registered dietitian nutritionist and own a private nutrition practice, where I provide one-on-one nutritional counseling to patients. I specialize in chronic disease prevention/ management, vegan/ vegetarian nutrition, pre-natal/ postpartum nutrition, wellness coaching, medical nutrition therapy, and weight management.

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