That leaf was conceived in wedlock.
Well yeah bay leaves do usually get removed before serving
I assume that’s for garnish
Ah! The vegetarian plate!
Bay leaves, at this point is just a cultural thing
Wait til they find out about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuffed_leaves
In fairness, I’m not sure anyone knows if bay leaves even do anything.
Might as well just boil up a handful of grass from the local park, about the same.
my person, it absolutely does i love them very much, they are one of my favourite spices
Just smell it (not just bay leaves but whatever). If it has a smell, that aroma can be infused into cooking, though you’ll want to make sure it’s edible before just throwing it into dishes.
And you might need to sauté them for a bit (also called tempering) to infuse that aroma into oil, since it’s not all water soluable.
I wasn’t sure myself, so i made a “tea” out of bay leaves to check, and i can confirm that they do in fact have a pretty distinct flavor.
This is smart, I don’t know when to put it in so I should get familiar with the taste
In the tea? I just stuck a leaf in a cup with water and microwaved it for a minute or two.
In food? I usually put it in as soon as I start the simmer on a liquid part of the dish. It takes a long while for the flavor to really become significant.
… what?
Make a dish twice, once without the bay leaf. There is an obvious difference. It’s fine to not like the taste of any particular spice but saying there is none is sort of crazy?
He’s joking, it’s people that don’t cook often don’t know what the difference is
Bay leaf does provide a subtle earthy flavour, but it is also an anti fungal. I guess your left overs will stay edible a bit longer.
It also looks exactly the same as a clove leaf. A shop sold me a bag of mis-labelled clove leafs and my Bolognese that evening tasted most strange
Ah, yeah, the kind of cooking our household does is usually pretty strong favour wise (lots of South Asian cooking), it’s probably why neither my wife or I have ever noticed it.
Maybe if when make Italian food we should use it :)
While I support the message of never eating at Chipotle again, she’s doing it for the wrong reasons.
I don’t eat at Chipotle because they were bought by private equity and subsequently enshittified to further enrich someone who already had more wealth than could be spent in a lifetime.
She doesn’t eat at Chipotle because she found a bayleaf in her burrito bowl…
That’s where food comes from - trees, bushes, grasses, dirt.
Also - if Minecraft has taught me anything - punching animals until some chops appear in my inventory.
Cherry on top would have been if her name was Laurel
Leaf on top
Guess this person is unfamiliar with seasoning and the fact that bay leaves are used for flavor.
I cook all the time, every day, and have never once said, “This needs a bay leaf.” I don’t even know when it’s appropriate to use it. My mom puts a bay leaf in everything - spaghetti sauce, chili, pot roast, etc. - but I’m not convinced she knows what she’s doing, she just does it.
Seriously, what’s a bay leaf for? What does it do to the flavor?
It has a soft flavor. I don’t put it into anything spicy, and probably won’t be noticeable with the way Americans seem to do seasoning. But if I’m making a soup with some meat and potatoes and various vegetables, I’ll put it in, it’ll be noticeable.
If you just boil beef with and without it, you’ll feel the difference the most, I think.
I’ve read it enhances every other flavour, kind of like salt but without making things salty
I just toss a sprinkle of msg in, does wonders
MSG only enhances umami and has a distinctly salty flavor. Try substituting a bay leaf for a fuller, richer flavor. You may want to remove the leaf before serving.
MSG isn’t just enhancing umami, it tastes umami by itself, because the umami taste is triggered by receptors on the tongue that react to some amino acids, one of them being the glutamate in Mono-Sodium-Glutamate. The salty part comes from the sodium, which has its own receptors as well.
This stuff is literally made for our taste buds.
Hmm, that’s interesting. I got a pot of chili scheduled for later today, I’ll try a bay leaf.
I’ve been perfecting my chili recipe for years. It includes red wine, cocoa powder, and lime juice. Perhaps a bay leaf will become part of it.
Have you tried a little bit of espresso grounds? It adds a certain flavor to meats that’s just… incredible… Might not go with what you have here though.
Or like tap out the tiniest amount of cinnamon on your hand and add whatever falls off of it? It shouldn’t even be enough to say there’s cinnamon in it. It’s like nature’s msg, it just makes it taste better, gives it a good homogeneous flavor that pops somehow. Straight up witchcraft
Cinnamon is my favorite spice, but I don’t put it in my chili, even though I know people who do. I think I’d be able to taste it too much.
And I’m not a coffee drinker, at all, so I don’t think a coffee ingredient is going to work for me. I get it, though.
The cocoa powder was the big revelation for me, it really adds a nice hint of molé. Next was lime juice, which does something to balance the flavors. I’m finding it handy for lots of stuff.
I’ve been experimenting with soy sauce, too.
Bay leaf is subtle but nicely “rounds out” the dish. It’s not a distinct spice flavour like pepper or thyme. I use it in a lot of the food I cook but not everything. Putting it in chili is exactly where it should be put.
Interesting, I’m looking forward to giving it a try.
21 first century woman that doesn’t know how to cook? Checks out
i think it’s more significant that she’s a white american who desn’t know what goes into food than that she’s a she
bay leaves are bitter af
You’re not supposed to eat it
They are just for flavor not for eating. Can’t recommend eating cloves or allspice berries either.
That’s why you take them out afterwards
And also so they don’t tear up your insides.
Wait, they go to a bay and pick up leaves to put in food? Urgh, yuck!
Why can’t they just use the aromatic herb from a laurel tree?You want one from a bay or harbor, where the pollution hast concentrated, and the bay leaf has been able to draw in all the tasty flavors of PCBs, chemical waste, sewage, fertilizers, pesticides, industrial run-off, etc. It’s all those subtle flavors that make the Bay Leaf the King of Seasonings.
I worked with a dude who loved “ramen” but had never had it from a restaurant. He didn’t seem like he knew how to cook particularly well, and I’m not sure if he’d ever even left the suburbs he was born in.
One day he was talking about how excited he was to go to a real ramen shop over the weekend. So next time I see him I asked how it went. He sighed and said he got a veggie ramen because he found out the meat ones were “made with bone” and he was grossed out by it. I could only say “of course, that’s how you make good soup.” Then I had to explain how you make stock or split pea with ham soup, etc. I think I ruined soup for him.
Vegetarian soups are still delicious though. Soup is just awesome all around
I can’t downvote you for an honestly expressed opinion, but soup is a disappointing meal.
I respect your wrong opinion
Tbh, that would be a functional dish without the broth.
Oooh, is that a soup though? Soup is something that’s eaten with a soup spoon. I challenge you to eat noodles with a soup spoon. That looks damned fine, by the way.
[I never said my opinions were rational, only correct, like an absolute truth of the universe.]
certified banger
Oh, God. Please buy yourself a McWhatever with shoebox-tasting fries and make your angry tiktoks or whatever.
I can’t bay leaf that happened to her.
I was hoping the Pun People would have stayed on Reddit. I haven’t missed scrolling through miles of puns before getting to real posts…
No need to be paprikabout it.
Sir this is a shitpost
This thread is just going to be peppered with puns now.
I knew things were going to get spicy in here.
Ain’t nobody got thyme for that.
Incorrect. I love pun threads, they are mint…
Cummin mate, that’s enough with the puns
I appreciate you addressing it gingerly. Even the punniest Portlanders would give these puns the old oregaNO. 😬
Only seasoned veterans will get this thread.
Others might be salty about missing the joke.
Don’t have to be salty about it.
