Organic Basil Dried Herb Standard Jar - 14g - Steenbergs details and description

Steenbergs Organic Basil is the perfect herb for pasta, tomato sauce and chicken and has a dark green colour. The flavour of organic basil is almost addictive and there is little that organic basil cannot improve.  The drying process does remove some of the top notes and creates a more allspice and clove taste, so it's really a different flavour than fresh basil but is still a very versatile herb.

Known as tomato's best friend, add Steenbergs organic basil to salads, soups (try Steenbergs Asparagus And Pink Peppercorn Soup), fish and vegetables, especially aubergines, courgettes or squash; it is also wonderful on meat and poultry, or within patés.  Add organic basil at the end of cooking for the strongest flavour, sprinkled over a freshly made pizza or over parsnips roasted slowly.  For more inspiration and recipes created using basil, try BBC or Delia Online.

The most popular variety of basil for cooking is the succulent, large leaved variety, Ocimum basilicum which hails from Genoa in Northern Italy.  These sweet basil plants are annual herbs that thrive in the summer heat, then die off with the first sign of winter - perhaps this is why basil seems to evoke warm summer days and works best with food that is summery in nature, especially tomatoes.  Sweet basil plants grow to about 50cm high (20 inches).  Their stems are tough and square, while their leaves are dark-green and oval-shaped, ranging in size from 30mm (1 inch) to 100mm (4 inches)in length.  While the aroma of basil leaves is really strong and refreshing, with hints of clove and anise, the taste is much less pervasive than that and can be used in large quantities.

Dried sweet basil are very different from the fresh leaves.  The fresh and fragrant top notes that are so distinctive in the fresh leaves disappear, while the volatile oils concentrate in the plant cells to increase the anise and clove spiciness, plus a pepperminty flavour comes through during longer cooking.

For more information on basil, try Wikipedia.

Organic basil is part of Steenbergs UK range of over 400 organic spices, peppers, herbs and flavoured sugars.  They can be obtained from most of our retail stockists; for your local stockist click on "Where to see us", call us on 01765 640 088 or email enquiries@steenbergs.co.uk.