Grind your bay leaves
Over and over a recipe ends with “remove the bay leaves and serve.” Sorry, but using whole bay leaves, dry or fresh, doesn’t make sense. Put a few dried bay leaves into the spice grinder and treat them like the rest of your dried additions. Same with fresh bay or give them a nice fine chop. Why do folks grind everything from peppercorns, to sumac, to cardamom, to pandan, but use bay leaves whole. I don’t get it, and I'll bet you release more flavor from the ground/cut form..
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16 Comments:
And I suspect that might just be the exact reason they're left whole. Depending on the variety, bay can be very assertive. I would rather use a couple of extra whole leaves for a more pronounced flavor that I can remove than mix in the ground which is there forever -- possibly getting stronger as the dish ages, even overnight.
zucchini at 3:18PM on 08/05/09
Finely ground, that is, powdered, bay leaves are the extra ingredient in Cuban bread that makes it Cuban. I could buy it already ground when I lived in Florida, but strangely, haven't found it that way now that I'm back in Chicago. I suppose I just haven't looked that hard.
MarvinDog at 3:36PM on 08/05/09
@ MarvinDog If you can't find ground bay leaves in the stores in Chicago, then go to www.cubanfoodmarket.com. They have it there.
finsbigfan at 3:55PM on 08/05/09
My personal preference is to use whole, Turkish bay leaves. Easier than grinding or over seasoning with ground bay.
CJ McD at 4:05PM on 08/05/09
People remove them because whole leaves are a choking hazard. Ground spices lose their potency very quickly and many people find it's easier to pluck a leaf out of a pot of sauce than grind the leaves every time you use them.
ProfessorChaos at 4:06PM on 08/05/09
Imparting the essence of bay leaf into a soup, stock or stew is one thing. Irretrievably adding the full-on flavor of ground bay leaves may not be suited for every recipe that advises the cook to remove the bay leaf.
therealchiffonade at 5:02PM on 08/05/09
Ground bay leaves can be texturally unappealing, too. Unlike other ground spices that disappear or (like pepper) can have a pleasing crunch, ground bay give your dish a gritty or chalky mouthfeel. In the right dish, it would be okay (like the bread mentioned above), but it's not something I would haphazardly use.
Small pieces would be awful. Choking hazard is one thing, but those things are sharp and pretty solid. I wouldn't want chunks of that getting stuck in my throat or wending its way through my system.
Finely chopped fresh bay leaves wouldn't be as bad, but even so, I'd rather use 'em whole and take them out.
dbcurrie at 6:24PM on 08/05/09
Good selection of answers, but they seem to revolve around the idea that you don’t know how much to use. So, if you do your homework and learn the taste profile of the materials used in your cooking, you should have no problem. Can you add dried oregano, basil, rosemary (gads!) garlic WITH ASSURANCE? If so, why not learn how to add bay? Seems a bit of laziness enters here…..recipes tell me all and I can’t do it myself. Try it!
Love ya.
Fred Rickson at 7:39PM on 08/05/09
The dried herb mix that I use for many of my soups has oregano, thyme, basil, and bay leaves that are chopped up, practically ground. It works well.
I can't believe adults and children over the age of 10 would be careless enough to choke on whole bay leaves. They're huge! I look at my food when I eat it, and can't think of a time when I've shoveled 2" by 2" blocks of sauce in my mouth, or stared at a tv/book/person instead of my plate/bowl. :O
Cassaendra at 7:54PM on 08/05/09
I have a couple of recipes that call for finely ground bay leaves. They are recipes that have a lot of heat and can stand the strength of bay. The soups and stew that I make I put in 3-4 bay leaves for just a hint of the flavor.
I have not encountered one soul on the site that is lazy, Fred. However. I have encountered too many folks that are insulting and have an attitude that is just not justified in this forum.
janaatwg at 9:08PM on 08/05/09
@janaatwg, apparently the question was asked, "why don't you grind your bay leaves?" with his preferred answer in mind. Because obviously we're all too lazy, and also too stupid to figure how much spice to use. Now that he's patted himself on the back for exposing our flaws, I'm sure he feels much better.
dbcurrie at 9:36PM on 08/05/09
Someone gave me a spice set that included crushed bay leaves and I always wonder if it's okay to add to recipes that call for a whole leaf. I've never noticed a difference in flavor whether I use it or not though. So maybe as the @professor said, it lost its potency with its whole form.
That said, I second the point that it's not often ground because it loses flavor.
yayfood at 10:07PM on 08/05/09
I once screwed up a pot of tomato gravy because I forgot to take out the bay leaves before I whizzed it up with an immersion blender. So there were these weird little hard poking things in the gravy. It took me a while to figure out what they were and thinking about it now pisses me off all over again.
RegrettableFoodie at 10:24PM on 08/05/09
I leave bay leaves out of recipes all together, because I find the taste overpowering and unpleasant.
juliebugsmama at 12:50PM on 08/06/09
@finsbigfan
Thanks for the tip!
MarvinDog at 3:41PM on 08/06/09
Bay is extremely strong, adding a whole leafs worth of ground to a pot of soup would make it taste incredibly strange. as the surface area is so great after grinding, the flavor release is a hundredfold higher than what you get steeping a whole leaf.Too much can give a flavor that most people would find offensive, but a subtle touch from steeping whole leaves gives you a pleasant flavor. We use ground bay in many industrial seasonings, but at only a fraction of the weight a recipe would call for using whole leaves.
Meat guy at 4:15PM on 08/06/09