I Can’t Cook Without Bay Leaves
They are as essential as kosher salt, fresh-ground black pepper and lemons.
This is I Can't Cook Without, the column where Matt Card shares his essential ingredients, tips and techniques for getting dinner on the table.
Chris and I enjoy many of the same things—John Le Carre books, “The Wire,” tonkotsu ramen—but we can’t come to terms on other issues, like our choice of rye whiskey, the Grateful Dead or the flavor of bay leaves. While Chris rants and raves about bay leaves, complaining bitterly about their useless flavor and aroma, they are as essential to my cooking as kosher salt, fresh-ground black pepper and lemons.
The savory, herbaceous flavor and subtle aroma is something I crave in my cooking. Bay leaves contribute a flavor that we know more by its absence than presence; a soup, stew, sauce or braise without bay is like a chocolate chip cookie without enough vanilla—hollow tasting and bland.
I will agree with Chris that most recipes are wrong about how they use bay leaves. A singular, stale leaf adrift in a pot of soup or a hearty stew simply doesn’t register. Instead, try adding three or four. (You’ve likely noticed that most Milk Street recipes double or quadruple the leaves in a recipe—I’ve had my say!) And treat them like you would any whole spice: Toast them with the aromatics to bring out their volatile oils and fragrance.
Get the most flavor out of bay leaves with bay salt
There’s a better way to add bay flavor. Years ago, we developed a grilled beef skewer recipe based on a dish we’d had in Madeira (as in Portgual), in which chunks of beef were threaded onto fresh bay twigs with fresh leaves.
We (obviously) didn’t have fresh bay branches handy, and had to come up with a more practical way to suffuse the beef with bay flavor. We eventually tested our way into a solution, grinding whole leaves down to a powder and seasoning the beef, which thoroughly dispersed the heady flavor and aroma.
That evolved into an all-purpose bay salt, which you can use on pretty much anything: In a spice grinder, combine 14 medium dried bay leaves (about ⅓ cup), 1 tablespoon black peppercorns and 1 or 2 dried árbol chilies (or 1 tablespoon Aleppo pepper). Process until finely ground, about 30 seconds. Add 3 tablespoons kosher salt and 1 tablespoon white sugar; pulse to a fine powder. Store in an airtight container.
I keep a jar of this stuff next to my salt box and use it all the time. Bay salt-seasoned chicken is a game changer—just swap it out for standard salt in any chicken recipe. It’s terrific on pork, perhaps blended with fennel seed, a little orange zest and rosemary for a riff on porchetta, or added to meatballs. Or hamburgers—bay is beef’s best friend.
I can’t make eggs—scrambled, fried, baked—without bay salt. Nor grilled cheese sandwiches, quesadillas, mac and cheese or simple rice. Roasted, mashed or smashed potato? Natch. Clearly, I think that there’s little that bay salt doesn’t improve.
Don’t forget the sweet side of bay leaves
Bay has this remarkable ability to add warmth and edges to creamy custards or citrus-tinged syrups and cakes. One of my favorite Milk Street recipes soaks a simple almond cake in a tangerine-bay syrup that’s far greater than the sum of its part.
Another one of my favorite desserts has a similar flavor profile with an even easier base: broken phyllo pastry. This Greek cake, called portokalopita, undergoes a bit of kitchen alchemy as the flaky sheets turn to a tender crumb when baked.
Bay leaves will even improve your breakfast. I’ll eat this bay and apricot compote as intended, with yogurt, or dollop it on porridge (or roasted sweet potatoes—one of my favorite breakfast foods). Go ahead and pair it with those bay-seasoned eggs for complete bay immersion!
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Matthew Card
Matthew Card is Milk Street’s Creative Director for Recipes and Products, resident coffee geek, knife collector and equipment junkie. He has 25-plus years of professional cooking, recipe development, food writing and teaching under his belt. When he’s not in the Milk Street kitchen or on the road hunting for new recipes and ideas, Matthew lives with his family in Canberra, Australia, where he does his best to dodge kangaroos on his mountain bike and is learning to love Vegemite.
