People ask me how I know what to season and how to season it. I thought I’d write about a couple of ways to think about it.
You can think about seasoning as a way of creating one flavor. For example, all these different things go in to create spaghetti sauce, and you taste and it and say, “That’s spaghetti sauce.” But sometimes you cook and you want to get all the individual flavors. There’s different ways of seasoning things, as a whole or you want to flavor the ingredients individually.
Seasoning is supposed to enhance your food, not overpower your food, and sometimes you use it to adjust the balance. For example, I saw something on Facebook the other day, and they talked about “who put sugar in their spaghetti sauce?” It’s actually a common thing to do, just a pinch of sugar, and it takes some of the acid away. You can use a pinch of salt in something sweet, like when I’m making whipped cream or things like that, that don’t actually ask for salt. So that’s kind of balancing a flavor or enhancing it. I saw on Ina Garten’s show she puts instant coffee in all her chocolate. And it enhances it, you can’t taste the coffee. I now do it with all my chocolate cakes.
A thing to do is to start thinking about foods that you really like. Find out what seasonings are there. For example, you go to a restaurant and you eat this great bread. Ask what the seasoning is in the bread. And you are told, “It’s rosemary.” Now you know you like Rosemary. Maybe next time you are making potatoes you can try and use a little Rosemary. Let’s say Rye bread, you may see caraway seeds. So that’s the same seed that’s in some Italian sausage. So that’s what that tastes like. So if you ever wanted to grind up some caraway seeds in something, you’ll know you like that flavor.
Poultry seasoning is what Thanksgiving tastes like. It’s in stuffing, it’s on our potatoes, you can taste it in our gravy. I think sage flavor is more predominate in that seasoning. If you like something that’s real “thyme-y”, lots of soups have thyme. Generally mushroom soup, for example. Nutmeg is what Eggnog tastes like. Start to pay attention to your taste preferences and then start experimenting with a few of those things.
Now, as far as different cuisines go, think about chopping up a bunch of tomatoes. Add a little fresh onion and you add a little garlic to it. So right there, we can go in two directions, we can add cilantro, add jalapeno peppers, and you can add some lime juice, and now you have salsa. Or you could add basil, some nice salt, and some olive oil and now you have a bruschetta.
It’s like a piano has all these notes and depending on how you blend the notes, you get a different song. We create different cuisine flavors by how we season things. And all across the world, we’re using the same ingredients, mostly. There’s a lot of exotic stuff in the Asian countries that we don’t have access to here, or we don’t know about. And there are the most beautiful spices in the world in the Middle Eastern countries, but basically we’re all doing the same things just mixing them differently.
Italian cooking is big on Oregano, in Mexican cooking too. Also in Italian cooking basil is used, but you don’t really use basil in Mexican food, you use it in Thai food. So see, you just got to kind of see what it is you like to taste and what cuisine when you’re doing a recipe, you’ll kind of figure that out.
In seasoning things, there’s no shame in opening a package. For example, I make the best chicken tortilla soup I’ve ever tasted, with the Lazy Dog Cafe coming in a close second. To season it, I get my flavor from a package, it’s a chicken fajita mix, but it just has the perfect amount of smokiness. Why mess with perfection and messing with 20 spices to get the same results?
People ask me, “How do I know how to season vegetables?”, Once again, you pay attention to the things that you like, but generally some of the fresher herbs tastes good on vegetables. We use dill, you could use tarragon, etc. And don’t be afraid to put some herbs in when you’re making a salad, putting some fresh basil in for example. The lighter herbs go with the vegetables, enhancing on masking the flavor. Next time you have a really nice vegetable, when you go out somewhere, ask them what they put on it.
Another thing that we try and achieve when we’re seasoning something is adding an “acid”, when we want to enhance, or we want to balance something. If we have something that was cooked with a lot of oil, we want to cut it with a little acid. A little vinegar tastes just amazing with it ,or some lemon. So we make asparagus and then basically we seasoned with salt and pepper, and we put some lemon on it, it’s perfect. So we’re counterbalancing the oil or the butter that we cooked it in. And so those are things that you want to think about too, that’s all part of seasoning something.
Here are my thoughts on fresh vs dry herbs. We will start with the most common fresh herbs. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, Basil and Thyme. Bay leaf also. I am lucky enough that I have little pots outside so I can grab some fresh. If you’re going to use dried, think about the fact that you use a little less with dried, because the flavor’s more intense. Of course, fresh is always preferred, but everybody can’t do that all the time. Also, think about the point when you are adding dried herbs, if you need to sprinkle on some parsley on the end don’t use dry, it won’t have time to rehydrate, so it’d be like chewing on little crunchy things. Add dry herbs to add the flavor near the beginning of the cooking process. Herbs are fun!
Last thought. Remember, start out small. More is not always better. I had an unfortunate incident with pickling spices once. But more about that next time!
I hope this helped and motivated you to go buy some spices. Try something fun. Pay attention to what you like, buy it, and if you can, try a fresh herb. I’m so excited for you.