Sugar and salt are far from the only flavoring agents for any baker worth their weight in flour. The same goes for mixologists and chefs. Innovative epicures are branching out to less-reached-for ingredients to take their culinary creations to the next level — and botanicals are the name of the game.
Cooking with botanicals can be loosely defined as any time plant matter is used to add flavor to a recipe. Those botanicals can be derived from flowers, leaves, roots, or fruits, and as a result offer wide-ranging flavor notes from herbaceous to bitter, savory, grassy, floral, and vegetal. In other words, a “botanical” recipe might taste like a green bell pepper or like a perfumey rose. Regardless of the specific taste, incorporating botanicals lends immediate depth, sophistication, and intrigue to your tried-and-true recipes. Bust out the plant matter for an impressive, avant-garde departure from the traditional flavors to which the palette might be more accustomed. Your dinner party guests won’t soon forget the conceptual sensory experience they shared at your aromatic table.
Happily, just as their flavors can be so wide-ranging, botanicals offer a similarly wide-ranging scope of opportunities for inclusion, from cocktails to baked goods to sautéing and roasting. Two surefire methods for incorporating botanicals into your go-to recipe rotation is to turn them into flecked compound butters or flavored simple syrups. These can be used as finishers over other dishes. Or, alternatively, don’t be shy about making that botanical ingredient the star of the show.
Plant power delights the palette with dimensional, unexpected tastes
In the dessert realm, you can easily use rosewater by adding it to boxed cake mix or homemade buttercream frosting. Orange blossom water can be added to pitchers of lemonade or used to brighten nutty baklava. Or, try popping a sprig of fresh lavender into a glass of iced coffee (lavender has been dominating the Starbucks menu) or baking it into lemon bars.
For fans of savory baked goods, herbs like thyme, oregano, or tarragon can be sprinkled into your next batch of scones. This honey rosemary hazelnut shortbread boasts round, sweet balance. And sage is a perfect addition to biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast.
In the cocktail sphere, botanicals bring significant dimensionality to craft beverages, like this blackberry sage margarita, this elderflower pear martini, or literally any drink with a base spirit of juniper-forward gin. Non-alcoholic cocktail lovers are also turning to botanicals to bring dimensional, mature flavor to mocktails, such as a watermelon basil spritzer.
The cooking uses for botanicals are limited only by your imagination. You could lacto-ferment a jar of carrots with whole white peppercorns, cloves, and juniper berries for acidic spice and warming bite, or toss fresh botanicals into yogurt — or dried botanicals into pizza crust. Fennel is what gives Italian sausage its signature flavor, and lemongrass tofu or Vietnamese-inspired lemongrass chicken thighs would make a knockout filling for a bánh mì sandwich.
