When to Use Dried Herbs Over Fresh Herbs

Dried herbs have their place when cooking.

Generally, fresh anything is better than non-fresh anything, but there must be some use for dried herbs, otherwise there wouldn't be a mile-long rack of them at the grocery store. What gives? As we all know, fresh herbs deliver a taste that is unparallelled by their dried counterparts, but there are times when fresh herbs just won't do the trick, at least not as well as you'd like. For instance, when making pasta sauces, soups or other dishes that can take a while to cook, your fresh, green herbs turn black pretty quickly.

While you may get the desired flavor out of fresh herbs, your presentation will suffer. No one wants to eat black, limp oregano, basil, rosemary or other herbs.

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Also, since fresh herbs are soft already, they break down more quickly, allowing them to, in essence, run out of flavor earlier making their time of usefulness to that particular dish run shorter than the dish itself. This is why you'll see chefs add fresh parsley, oregano and/or basil to a pasta dish almost immediately before serving, while they use the dried versions in sauces, soups, etc. from the very beginning. Dried herbs are tougher and take longer to break down, which is what makes them more applicable to long-cooking dishes. 

If you're steeping stock or simmering sauce, dried herbs are the better choice. They'll have plenty of time for the heat in the liquid of the dish to break them down and the color loss will be insignificant. You may, however, want to have some of the fresh varieties ready and chopped for the final presentation.

One more note: when herbs are dried, their oils are trapped inside the herb. Since almost all the flavor of the herb is in its oils, shake the dried herb into the palm of your hand first, then pinch and CRUSH it with your  fingers before sprinkling it into your dish. This will allow more of the oils to escape since you will break apart that outer, dried crust of the herb.