Jamie Oliver talks you through cooking with herbs

herbs herbs is a really very cool part
of cooking it’s great for flavor amazing
for health to be general and I’m going
to split it into two camps first of all
we’ve got the woody camp so that’s
things like we’ve got the time here
we’ve got the rosemary here and the sage
so thyme rosemary sage they’re really
common herbs they’re brilliant herbs but
also you’ve got things like bay leaf
myrtle there’s all sorts of weird and
wonderful things out there go get them
plant them up whether it’s a window box
up in a flat or in a back garden
brilliant and also the great thing about
these is you can have time rosemary sage
nearly all year round if not all year
round to put into your cooking so at
this time of year when the weather’s not
too hot what you can do is just run
these under hot water for seven seconds
that loosens up the natural oil makes it
much much more tasty and easy to deal
with with things like time to prep these
dead simple just grab yourself a stalk
hold your fingers over it like that and
just carefully pull the stalk away from
here see that nice and easy and then
with the rosemary you can do exactly the
same but the other way around you hold
the end and the rosemary leaves will
come off you might not always want to
take the herbs off the stalk and for the
sage literally you’re just snapping them
and picking them off so once you pick
these woody herbs you know you can
either roughly slice them or what I like
to do I call it the cigar method I
basically get as many leaves as I can
and just sort of roll it up and fold it
up and sweep you know as many of the
leaves into it as possible and then that
way you’ve got a nice dense clump of
herbs and then using that rocking action
on the knives you can either finally all
roughly slice these little babies into
either slices or you can just simply
twist it afterwards and then you can
kind of get it sort of roughly chopped
and if you want it really fine use the
cross chopping method and there you go
and as I said horses for courses you
might not always want to slice or chop
woody herb so you might want to bash em
or leave them whole but there’s that
for the moment and then on the soft
herbs here’s a few little things I use
the same method again parsley stalks
often I use there’s nothing wrong with
them I’ll normally take parsley stalks
down to about here right they’re
delicious
up to about here right and then I’ll use
the slightly woodier stuff like this for
sort of soups and stocks and stuff like
that so instead of kind of like you know
just endlessly picking herbs like you
see in the restaurants you know at home
and in the restaurant frankly I go to
the sort of last leaf here straight off
like that and get through my jobs
quicker also those delicate little
stalks in your food a delicious because
they’re sweet and I just think you know
it’s a good flavor so why would you
chuck it away so that’s the parsley
again I’ll roll that up like the cigar
method like that and you can get really
good results on your finely slicing
straightaway and just rolling it out
almost done sort of half of the slicing
for you so there’s some sliced up
parsley and then on things like mint and
basil
now mint and basil a fragrant incredible
herbs right and a personal thing that I
do is I get a little cup of water right
I just have that when I’m picking my
herbs you know I don’t do it too
thoughtfully but I take the smaller
leaves like this put it into the water
right and that’s what I’m going to
sprinkle on to my pastas my salads my
shoes or whatever it is that I’m doing
ray goes so these fine leaves here are
going to be delicate to eat at the last
minute and also they’ll look dead
beautiful so it makes you look better
right so the delicate ones here like
that and then I take the big leaves like
that and I’ll slice them up using the
cigar method so I’ll do that on the mint
as well just take those delicate little
leaves in here and then take the bigger
ones off here like that and then you
know you can pop that in the fridge for
hours come back to it sprinkle it over
whatever it is you’re doing any or look
amazing and then again on these basil
and mint you can roll it up a lava cigar
method and finally slice it so there you
go there’s a bunch of tips about how to
use your herbs you know another big
aspect of herbs is using the pestle
water and to know how to do that
properly just click on pestle and water
on the apps