Everyone loves a tasty little something to munch on, and it is fun to cook up a yummy treat to share! You can make delicious food by using herbs when you cook. In fact, throughout history people have used herbs in their cooking to make their food tasty and healthy. When you add herbs to food, you get all of the wonderful healing properties from the herbs along with the special delicious flavor of the plants. So invite your herbal friends into the kitchen to help you cook up some tasty food for your family and friends!
This is the last lesson in our eight part Introduction To Herbs For Kids series and by now you know a lot about herbs and how to use them! Put all that wonderful learning to work in the kitchen. Get out into your garden and harvest some of those beautiful herbs you have grown and bring them into the kitchen to play with. Review the pharmacy lesson to help you make tasty infusions to drink and herbal infused oil to use as salad dressings, popcorn topping, and more!
Are you ready to cook up some wildly tasty and healthy food?
Special Herbal Terms
How To Cook With Herbs
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The first thing to remember when cooking with herbs is to have fun! Take some time to smell the herbs you are cooking with, don’t they smell amazing? Let yourself enjoy using herbs and connecting with the plants. The second thing to remember is to always have adult permission for tasting herbs and for any cooking project. It can get dangerous in the kitchen so keep yourself safe and ask for help!
Tips & Tricks
Sometimes it helps to know a few tricks to make things easier. Here a few ideas to help you out when cooking with herbs.
Leaves:
Strip leaves off of plant stems before adding them to your food. Sometimes the stems can be a little thick and tough to chew. To strip the leaves off, you can either pull the leaves off the stems one at a time or you can hold the stem top with one hand and grab the stem with your other hand and pull from the top to the bottom of the stem. This help the leaves come away from the stem. Once you have the leaves off the stem you can use kid-safe scissors to chop up the leaves right into your food!
Flowers:
You can gently pull the petals off of bigger blossoms such as calendula, chives, and roses. Rose petals have a bitter white nib where the petal attaches to the base of the flower. Snip or pull this little nib off if you wish. Other smaller flowers can be enjoyed whole. Examples are flowers from sage, borage, rosemary, nasturtium, violets, and pansies.
Be Daring & Experiment!
Let your imagination be your guide and, with your parent’s permission, experiment in the kitchen. Try adding herbs to some of your favorite dishes and see how it goes. Perhaps fresh chopped chives or basil would be tasty in your bowl of mac and cheese. Or maybe a few lavender blossoms all ground up into the batter would make your blueberry pancakes extra delicious. You could also try drizzling some herbal infused oil over your popcorn, wouldn’t basil or rosemary oil be yummy? Work with small amounts of food at first in case something doesn’t come out quite as you hoped – and have fun!
Keep It Fresh
Fresh herbs are delightful to munch! Go out to your herb garden to collect some fresh plants for cooking. Or visit your local farmer’s market where you are sure to find many tasty herbs destined for the kitchen and your tummy. You can use fresh herbs whenever you can get them – usually during the spring, summer and fall.
Fun Ways To Use Fresh Herbs
The possibilities are endless when it comes to cooking with fresh herbs. You can use them in all kinds of recipes. If a recipe calls for dried herbs, you can substitute fresh herbs but use more because fresh herbs generally aren’t as strongly flavored as dried herbs. Herbalists and chefs love adding fresh herbs to foods whenever possible. Here are some ideas to get you started!
Salads:
Toss whole herb leaves and flowers into salads for a special treat! Your salad creations can be savory with a veggie base or sweet and fruity. Herb leaves and flowers for salads include sage, lemon balm, violets, mint, anise hyssop, nasturtiums, borage flowers, rosemary, and more! Be sure to top your salad with infused herbal oil or herbal honey.
Butters:
Whip up some herbs with butter and honey and you will have a topping that is delicious on pancakes, muffins, biscuits, and more! Simply soften up a stick of butter and smash it up with around 1/2 cup of herbs and a bit of honey. Good herb choices are rose petals, violet and pansy flowers, and lemon balm. Or get savory by leaving the honey out and using herbs like rosemary, sage, chives and even garlic. So yummy on bread!
Dip It:
For an extra tasty treat, add fresh savory herbs to dips like guacamole and hummus. Chop up cilantro, basil, chives, and parsley and toss them into the bowl along with your other dip ingredients.
Get Festive & Decorate:
Why not make the food you cook look as amazing as it tastes? Fresh edible flowers make incredible decorations for food. Use pansies, violets, borage flowers, nasturtiums, chives, and the tiny flowers of rosemary, sage, and lavender to add beauty and flavor to your favorite dishes. They make fabulous cake and muffin decorations for tea parties, too!
Create Your Own Herbalicious Salad
- Carefully wash the lettuce, veggies, fruit, herbs, and flowers.
- Shred the lettuce and place into a bowl.
- Add the herb leaves to the bowl and toss with the lettuce to mix everything together.
- Chop the fruit and veggies into bite-size pieces and place into the bowl with the lettuce and herbs. You can toss everything together or simply leave the veggies and fruit on top of your lettuce/herb mix.
- Sprinkle your pretty flowers over the top of your salad.
- Serve your salad with herbal infused oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. You can either toss all of these with your salad, mixing them to taste, or let people add their own!
Use Them Dried
Dried herbs are wonderful to use in cooking during the winter months and even in the summer for convenience. Also, dried herbs are often stronger in flavor than fresh herbs so you don’t have to use as much to flavor your food.
Fun Ways To Use Dried Herbs
Dried herbs make a wonderful addition to any food that is going to cook for a while, giving the herbs time to soften and release their goodness into the food.
Infusions:
Dried herbs are wonderful to use when making infusions . It is fun to make up blends of dried herbs for infusions and store them until they are ready to use. Visit our pharmacy lesson to get instructions for brewing up your own herbal infusions .
Soups, Stews & Sauces:
Do you like sipping on a big bowl of tasty soup on a cold day? It feels so good and warms your insides right up! Add herbs to soups, stews, and sauces for lots of flavor. Culinary herbs like curry, cumin, rosemary, thyme and oregano make the perfect addition for adding lots of flavor to these foods. Nutritional herbs such as nettles, calendula, alfalfa, and dandelion make great additions too because they taste good and they give the food a lot of vitamins and minerals which helps you to be healthy and strong!
Baking:
Baking something warm and delightful to share is a special treat! Many dried herbs are used in baking, especially the warm and sweetly spicy ones. Tasty choices are cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and cardamom. You can also try using plants from the mint family such as rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, and even lavender and mint to make tasty treats. Add herbs to cookies, muffins, breads, and cakes, yum!