Hot take: I stopped using fresh herbs for 80% of my dishes

I know everyone says fresh is best, but after a dinner rush last Saturday I tried dried oregano and basil in my tomato sauce instead of fresh. The flavor was actually more consistent and I saved 15 minutes of prep. Has anyone else found a dried herb that beats fresh in certain dishes?

3 comments

3 Comments

samflores12d ago

Wait, dried basil in tomato sauce? That's insane to me. Fresh basil is like the whole point of making sauce from scratch, it's the star of the show. You're telling me you swapped it out for the dried stuff from a jar and it tasted better? I gotta be honest, that sounds like a crime against Italian cooking or something. But now I'm super curious, maybe I've been wasting my time chopping basil for the last ten years.

jana88111d ago

Oh totally, you're not alone here. Dried basil in tomato sauce is a game changer. I used to be a fresh basil snob too, chopping up a whole bunch and tossing it in at the end. But then I tried a big pinch of dried basil right when the onions and garlic were cooking, letting it rehydrate and bloom in the oil before the tomatoes went in. The flavor got so much deeper and richer, almost like it had been simmering for hours, and the sauce had this smooth, savory backbone that fresh basil just couldn't give. I still add a little fresh basil as a garnish sometimes, but the dried stuff does the heavy lifting now and I'm never going back.

jasonf3511d ago

Dude yes, same exact thing happened to me. I used to think dried basil was for people who gave up on life or something lol. But tossing it in the oil first gets this almost nutty, deep flavor that fresh basil just can't do no matter how much you put in.