Question
Mark Rappaport
Is it more suitable to add herbs and spices to my dishes while steaming or sautéing, or once it's been plated. Any suggested combinations?
Answer
Uh, usually people when they're cooking with herbs, um, and different spices are going to add them in during the cooking process. So whatever you're cooking absorbs the full flavor of those. Now there are exceptions to that as well too. So, um, finishing a diff dish with something like chives or um, parsley or cilantro over the top will give kind of a big punch of flavor at the same time. So say if you're making something like the tacos that I was making earlier, I was talking about, um, I would add, uh, cilantro to the top of that dish, um, as I'm serving it. But through the entire process, I'm using all kinds of different herbs and spices to be able to cook the mushrooms down into, to be able to make sure that those mushrooms or tofu or whatever you're cooking will absorb those flavors from the spices and herbs As you're going through that way, each bite you're going into, you're getting a big bite of those flavors that are coming from the herbs, um, and the spices that the whatever it's that you're cooking is cooked in. And then to be able to add different herbs, uh, to the top of them or spices to the top of it, to be able to get kind of a big punch at the end. Typically, um, you know, as on the bite, right? And it's not typically going to be every bite when you're doing that 'cause it's not cooked into every bite. Um, but you'll get kind of like little surprised, you know, bumps of flavor and it's much like putting like a finishing salt on something, you know, where you might just get a big like, uh, bump of kind of salt in one bite but not the other. So, uh, yeah, so both is the answer, uh, you're kind of looking for is you definitely want to be able to cook, uh, with the herbs and the spices, um, as you're going. And then you can also finish out your dish, uh, with them on top.
