Cooking From Your Home Herb Garden

When planting an herb garden for culinary use, it's important to consider what type of cooking you will be doing.
If you cook in a variety of cuisines, an all purpose culinary garden stocked with the most commonly used herbs will suffice.
However, when you cook in a specific cuisine, more care should be taken when selecting herbs for your garden.
While there is a lot of overlap in herbs between cuisines, some herbs are only used in certain cuisines.
For instance, most cooks do not know what quintoniles are because they are rarely seen outside of Mexican cuisine.
Basil, chives, garlic, rosemary, sage, summer savory and thyme are common additions to a basic culinary herb garden.
These herbs have widespread use across cuisines.
With these in your herb garden, you should be able to make at least basic recipes in each cuisine.
In French cuisine, herbes de provence are essential.
Recipes vary, but in general herbes de provence includes a mixture of marjoram, fennel, summer savory, bay, oregano, mint, chervil, thyme, tarragon and rosemary.
Sometimes you will see orange zest or lavender included, but these aren't part of the traditional mixture.
Whether used together or separately, these are the most common herbs used in French cooking.
Garlic, rosemary, oregano, chervil, parsley, thyme, basil, sage, garlic, chives and fennel are commonly found in Italian cooking.
Planting these herbs in your garden will ensure you have most of the herbs you need.
Keep in mind that several of these herbs do not withstand heat well and should be added at the end of cooking to prevent loss of flavor.
In Chinese cuisine, you will find different cultivars of herbs.
Chinese or garlic chives offer more garlicky flavor than the more commonly used chive variety.
Holy basil is more pungent than the basil used in Italian cooking and is rarely eaten raw.
Fennel, star anise, lemon grass, ginger and clove are also good options for a Chinese herb garden.
Planting cardamom, coriander, cumin, curry, fenugreek, mint and turmeric will provide you with herbs for Indian cuisine.
Garlic, ginger and cloves are sometimes also included in an Indian herb garden.
Several varieties of cardamom are used including regular, black and green so you may want to plant all three.
Anise, Mexican saffron, cilantro, cumin, mints and bay laurel are common herbs used in Mexican foods.
While they are difficult to find, you may also want to include annato, chaya, chepil, halachas or quintoniles in your Mexican herb garden.
These herbs are specific to the region and will give an authentic taste to your food.
They are rarely seen outside of Mexican cuisine.
By taking the time to consider the type of cuisines you cook, you can be sure to select the most useful herbs for cooking.
The culinary herbs that are found in a friend's or neighbor's garden may be completely different than the ones found in your own if they cook in a different cuisine.