What to do with a glut of fresh bay leaves?

MummyD

I popped two in my slow cooked beef this morning! They were fresh off the tree (well at least fresh off the hacked branches!) and they were delish.
Stronger taste than dried though.
Rx

Emuchops

I have a bay bush and think that the flavour you get with the fresh ones are much better than the dried. I always give them a bash with something heavy or scrunch them up before using so you get more flavour out.

Mrs_Chip

The flavor in bay leaves comes from the oil in the leaves, so really should not be much different between fresh and dried (as the oil remains behind in the dried leaves), athough bashing fresh will help release it, whereas with dried is harder to release the oil. All seems to come out in cooking though, and for anyone without their own tree having dried on hand is virtually as good as having fresh.

I always stick a couple under and some more into the cavity of a roasting chicken, it give the meat and the gravy a wonderful flavour (in fact I put bay leaves under any meat I am roasting, not that we are addicted or anything:D)

Bay is lovely in dishes such as rice pudding, it's not just a savory herb.

meritaten

I just pick the fresh leaves off my bay bush (its in a very large pot so that limits its size) and use them fresh. I do tho dry some of the branches when trimming it and give those away!

peachyprice

bupster wrote: »

You can't use these fresh, they *have* to be dried.

Of course you can! I've never dried them, just pick them offf my bush, snap them in half and use.

I've got two monster bushes, both over 12ft high, each has different flavour leaves.

ALIBOBSY

I always use mine fresh, as I love the taste of bay-I reckon fresh is slightly stronger and if you use young tender leaves you can chop them and treat like other herbs rather than fishing them out before eating.

Our tree gets a good cut back each year at the end of winter and it comes back lovely and strong in summer. Even after the low temps last year that made it look very dead and brown agood trim and shake off the old leaves and it grew backlike crazy.

Ali x

Jnelhams

If you have a Halogen Cooker (The ones which sit on the worktop and light up like Eddystone lighthouse) some have very low 60c temperature settings for such purposes.

Other than that spread them out in a single layer on baking trays and pop in the oven after you've turn the oven off from Sunday lunch.

dogstarheaven

normally, when using it in cooking, you would only ever to use no more than 2 leaves, so if you have a whole tree's worth, then it'll keep you in leaves for yrs to come. i tend to pick mine fresh for cooking, and never needed to dry them. mine's grown in 2 pots. in the wreaths i made for Xmas and a for a friend's funeral wreath recently, i used bay intermixed with other shrubbery. if you're handy, then make a wintery wreath with bay as the main plant. the latter wreath, i made with norwegian pine (v light blue), white and light pink flowering heather, rosemary, sage, epimedium (mottled red from the cold) and ivy leaf and flower. i then sprayed it heavily (4 times) with hair spray so as to set the colour and the freshness of the foilage.

you may not find the time to make a wreath, but they do look amazing for a home-made version. it's so much more natural and beautiful.

Sunnyday

I always do this :-

Get a needle and cotton and thread the bay leaves on to the cotton, i push the needle through the end of the leaf with the stalk on.

When there are around 25 leaves threaded tie the ends so that you have a circle of leaves and then hang them on the ends of the radiators to dry.

No costly oven running to pay for and they dry quickly - they will curl but thats not a bad thing.

Put in the nice stoppered D0ugh eg8erts coffee jars ( i get empties from friends and freecycle as we don`t use it) label them up and tie a piece of ribbon around the top. They look lovely and keep for ages. I have a couple of friends who really appreciate these each year.

SD

terra_ferma

I second freezing, I keep a box in my freezer with all sorts of herbs.
I was fed up with buying lovely fresh herbs and use 1/4 of them...
However remember that frozen herbs often have a stronger taste, so you need much less than the fresh ones.

I must admit the taste is not the same as fresh herbs (but I find them better than dried ones), however still nice to have a great choice of herbs, I had stopped using them altogether (OH is not keen on herbs so we use very little at the time)