How to use fresh orange thyme?
March 28, 2020 7:44 PM Subscribe
In a rush to buy a few potted herbs last week, I bought orange thyme without smelling it first (didn't want to contaminate!). If you've cooked with it, can you tell me how you've used it successfully?
So far I've very tentatively put small amounts in dishes with other herbs, but it'd be nice to know how to best use it specifically. Has anyone tried making a tea with it? Or maybe a syrup? The bit I tasted raw was a fragrant candy sort of flavor. Hope me!
So far I've very tentatively put small amounts in dishes with other herbs, but it'd be nice to know how to best use it specifically. Has anyone tried making a tea with it? Or maybe a syrup? The bit I tasted raw was a fragrant candy sort of flavor. Hope me!
Citrus and thyme seems to be a common combination, so I bet you could just swap out the thyme for orange thyme in some of these recipes:
orange thyme cake
orange thyme shortbread
orange thyme sorbet
orange thyme jam
I suspect using the orange thyme in place of thyme would amp up the orange-ness and tone the thyme flavors down a little, but there'd still be a little thyme note there.
I also bet it'd be amazing in bouillabaisse. That often has orange zest in it, and there are so many other competing flavors that it'd balance out any of the candy-ness. There are so many recipes for bouillabaisse that you could probably just pick one and throw in a sprig of the orange thyme as your DIY touch. Bouillabaisse is one of those classic recipes that started as kind of a catch-all work-with-what-you-got fish stew, and then each cook started getting all precious about which recipe was most "authentic" and everyone started squabbling over which of the gabillion recipes out there was "right" - but in my opinion that just means that no one is right, and it's all the more forgiving of some flavor improvisation like throwing in some orange thyme.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:36 AM on March 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
orange thyme cake
orange thyme shortbread
orange thyme sorbet
orange thyme jam
I suspect using the orange thyme in place of thyme would amp up the orange-ness and tone the thyme flavors down a little, but there'd still be a little thyme note there.
I also bet it'd be amazing in bouillabaisse. That often has orange zest in it, and there are so many other competing flavors that it'd balance out any of the candy-ness. There are so many recipes for bouillabaisse that you could probably just pick one and throw in a sprig of the orange thyme as your DIY touch. Bouillabaisse is one of those classic recipes that started as kind of a catch-all work-with-what-you-got fish stew, and then each cook started getting all precious about which recipe was most "authentic" and everyone started squabbling over which of the gabillion recipes out there was "right" - but in my opinion that just means that no one is right, and it's all the more forgiving of some flavor improvisation like throwing in some orange thyme.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:36 AM on March 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
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It’s super great infused in olive oil, vinegar, or in a simple syrup for cocktails, and I suspect it would be great if you infused some vodka with it and used that in cocktails. If you’ve never tried making a shrub, orange thyme would be a great herb to add to that (I would try strawberries first, and shrubs are really fun to add to seltzer).
I think it would also be great to flavor vanilla ice cream.
I had a similar conundrum when I bought a chocolate mint seedling once, and ended up having a really fun time with that.
posted by padraigin at 8:32 PM on March 28, 2020 [2 favorites]