The Pizza Therapy Forum and Pasta Therapy Forum

[dfandreatta]

Your thoughts about herbs - dried vs. fresh.

I like to use fresh oregano and basil in my recipes, as well as "real" onion and garlic. Here in Florida, it's no problem always having a good supply of fresh herbs just outside the door. I use those quite often.

For example, in my red pizza sauce, I will use fresh garlic, oregano and some basil leaves, and "spin it up" with a hand blender, with some dry red wine, before adding it to the red sauce. The red wine cuts the acidity of the tomato puree, makes the sauce very rich.

I sautée red onion and garlic for my white pizza sauce, rather than using garlic powder, garlic salt, or onion powder.

I find this gives some added richness to the final result.

Any thoughts on the differences you find in these compared to the dried or powder types?
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"Papa Don"
Apollo Beach, Florida

[pizza]

I use both.

Living in Hawaii, you can grow herbs all year long. I have a planter with a couple of herbs: basil, oregano, and rosemary. I'm also trying to grow arugala.

I imagine in Florida, Papa Don, you can do the same thing. If you live in a colder part of the country, you can treat herbs as house plants and just bring them in for the winter.

I have fresh basil always. I usually just put the fresh herbs on my pizza at the end of the cooking cycle.

For me the herbs are really the heart and soul of the taste of pizza.

I sometimes crush the dried herbs in my hand to release the flavor...
I don't really know if this does anything but I do it anyway.

albert

[dfandreatta]

One nice thing about growing your own herbs is that they are relatively easy to maintain. They benefit well from foliar feeding - just spritz the leaves with a little Miracle Gro or similar water soluble fertilizer every so often, along with the regular watering and feeding.

Yes, here in Florida it's possible to keep herbs going year around.

At their peak, I will pick quite a bit of it, wash and pat dry, then put into a ziplock bag with a little olive oil and freeze for use when the plants die out and I have to start new ones. Frozen this way, the herbs are just like freshly picked when you use them.

The dried herbs seem to have very different characteristics from the fresh, although I am sure the particular variety of those makes a difference as well.
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"Papa Don"
Apollo Beach, Florida

[jprince]

basically prefer using fresh herbs or may go for the dried one mostly powdered form.

[dfandreatta]

When using fresh herbs as opposed to the dry, do you notice a difference in the flavor, or character?

And do you notice a difference because of how the dry ones are processed, such as "ground" oregance over simply dried?

I approach much of cooking as somewhat of a chemist, analyzing what will complement what, and how the flavors will "marry" - so to speak.
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"Papa Don"
Apollo Beach, Florida