Freeze-Dried Herbs and Spices: Flavor in a Pinch with Our 2024 Guide!
Any chef, cook, caterer or home chef chasing umami, colour, fragrance and vibrant flavours has their eye on food that is “burning bright”. However, the demands of culinary deadlines or travel often do not lend themselves to a pastry chef channelling mile-a-minute hand-cutting, nor do they allow chain chefs or caterers on the move to churn through whole fresh ingredients as if they were butter. Freeze-dried herbs and spices give chefs and cooks worldwide an easy tool to drop a taste and colour bomb without prep or post-processing clean-up or any need to question anything but their own taste buds. Hence, we will explore why the foodservice trade leans on these ingredients and walk you through why, when it comes to harnessing flavours from natural ingredients, freeze-dried herbs and spices – the seasoning of the future – are the go-to choice.
The Freeze-Drying Process: Capturing Essence
First, a herb or spice is flash-frozen, then the pressure within the surrounding environment is reduced so that the frozen water in the herb will sublimate (ie, bypass ice and go directly to vapour). Lopho- means ‘wreath’, and -philos means ‘loving’ in Ancient Greek, meaning literally ‘wreath of loving’. This preservative technique also maintains the structure of the herb or spice, resulting in a final product with reduced moisture content but with more of the flavour and nutrients of the original product. The product will be a highly aromatic and flavourful bounty of herbs and spices, with much of the moisture removed, but maintaining their appearance and texture, able to be stored for a long time, and then brought back into kitchen use in a quick, easy and not messy way. Use will no longer require scraping and dumping out of a jar – it only requires crushing, and then adding it to a meal. Both crew and passengers loved the intense aroma and flavour of these dried herbs and spices.
Why Freeze-Dried Herbs and Spices Are Superior
Crazy Potency:
Freeze-drying retains the delicate volatile oils and fragrant flavour compounds that make herbs and spices’ personalities. They’re a super-powerful presence in your food, and have all the potency and the flavour of their fresh versions.
Less Water:
Since the moisture is all gone, herbs and particularly spices can last decades unopened and still taste exactly the same.
practicality:
you do not need to wash, chop or grind the spices yourself, it is all done for you. You will therefore spend less time preparing your meals.
Nutrition:
Because freeze-drying leaves them completely intact and undamaged, the vitamins and minerals can retain their wholeness when it’s done the right way, and they make a welcome addition to your life.
Versatility:
Use like for like with fresh herbs and spices they just disintegrate when they come into contact with liquid Perfect for cooking, baking and dressing.
A World of Flavor at Your Fingertips
From basil, parsley and cilantro to more exotic, flavourful spices and seasonings such as saffron, sumac, cinnamon and turmeric, the options today allow me to experiment with global cuisines and bolder flavours and ingredients than ever before, without having to buy fresh from across the world. Freeze-dried herbs and spices are incredibly convenient for weekly weeknight family meals as well as grand multi-course gourmet feasts.
Incorporating Freeze-Dried Herbs and Spices into Your Cooking
Soups and Stews:
Add the freeze-dried herbs bags to your pot for a rich, full-flavour.
Marinades and Dressings:
hydrate the ground spices by adding juices such as vinegar, lemon juice or broth. Shake them well to make a marinade or a dressing for your meats, salads and the like.
Bake at 375 degrees:
All breads benefit from the addition of one ounce of freeze-dried herbs.
This was so good, it deserves the addition of a Finishing Touch:
frozen food, be it braised meat or fresh pasta, usually comes out a bit drab. Give it a dusting of coloured freeze-dried herbs and spices to add a hit of flavour and a splash of colour.
American Steak or Canadian Steak?
Doesn't matter because we've got something cool and new for you! FD herbs for your steaks and other meats and poultry! Freeze-dried herbs punch up a rib steak dinner. Herbs harvested as they are wont to be (water-logged, that is, and therefore spongy and ready to wilt) are intensely flavourful, but through dilution they smear those volatile compounds in a diffuse outline. Because the volatiles aren’t lost to evaporation or leeching – they’re sequestered in airless microcosms, forced in tight fellatio by dehydration’s death-stab – hard-rock herbs steep a steak in flavour and aroma; as if they multiply the impact upon your taste buds and olfactory arresters. Along with salt, crushed freeze-dried rosemary, thyme, sage or oregano – or a combination – puts a gourmet tickle on an otherwise peddler-cut steak. Crush 1 to 2 tablespoons of fresh or dried rosemary, thyme, sage or oregano or a combination so that the flavours tingle under vigorous rub of the herb on the herb – a corona of tumescence stimulates the dorsal nerve. Sprinkle over your steak and rub the herbs into the steak as you rub salt on it. The herbs continue to punch into the meat as your steak intensifies and crunches to sauce life.
Your steak rub isn’t working. Put some dried herbs in it. Not only will your steak have more depth-of-flavour at the table, but you’ve got a kitchen win going too. They hydrate quickly when they hit the searing hot steak, they stay together better in the fridge, and you can put them in your cupped mixing spoon without chopping them up, letting you use them basically the same way you’d use fresh herbs. That’s why they’re great value too. Especially if you’re going for some herbal complexity with your steak: mix them together first and you can sprinkle here and there. And they hydrate so quickly in contact with hot steak juices, they start to blend in before you have to start getting the meat off the heat. You’re adding a concentrated flood of herbal goodness to every bite, cleaning up a little of the ‘manly’ blandness that, in a rich cut, can supernaturally scoot across the table.