How to Work with Thyme

​Hello, hello, everyone, welcome to The Dish, I'm Natasha Ho. And today I want to talk to you about an herb: thyme. Do you have time to talk about thyme?

So thyme is a very popular and common herb, but I know some people have questions on how to use it more effectively. When do I use it? What's the best way to combine it with different flavors? So I just want to quickly give you some pointers on how to work with thyme.

First thing to understand about herbs is there is kind of two categories that you can roughly put them into. You have your hardier herbs and you have your more delicate or tender herbs. And thyme falls into the category of more of those hearty herbs.

Hearty herbs tend to do better with the drying process. So thyme is a good one to also purchase dried. It will do well, both fresh as well as dried. Hardier herbs also are able to stand up to the cooking process better. So they are the kind of herbs that do well, if you add the earlier in the cooking process. They tenderize, they infuse their flavor into the food throughout the cooking process. So that's what's to know about using thyme.

When you're adding it to food, you can use it dry and you can also add it earlier in the cooking process and then you infuse flavor throughout that entire time that it's in your food.

The other thing to understand about thyme is combining it with other flavors. It is a Mediterranean herb. So think of other things that are from the Mediterranean and that'll give you an easy way to know what to combine it with. So other flavors of the Mediterranean think of things like rosemary, oregano, bay leaves. Also your produce, you can think of things like eggplant and think of lemon. I think of figs. I think of pomegranate. All of those other things that are from the Mediterranean region will be things that will also pair  very nicely with your thyme.

Time also does well with pretty much all of your meat options. I absolutely love it on potatoes. If you're doing roasted potatoes, I love to add thyme there as well.

You can make it either a central character in your dish or you can make something in the background. It will be able to pair nicely with other flavors where it's either going to be a complement or it can also be the star of your dish. So that's what to know about working with thyme in order to get great results.

Thank you for joining me. I'll see you next time. Bye.