While I am at it: herbs.
For many people,
fresh herbs are a sacred gospel and they do not accept alternatives to it.
I agree, that dried herbs from the supermarket often taste musty, alienated, scruffy.
The trick is to know the rare exceptions.
Then your life becomes easier, because I am often too lazy to run to the shop just to buy a pot of fresh Basil - and I wonder why I should do so when I do not even prefer the taste of fresh Basil to that of a special dried and shockfrosted one! I put fresh Basil onto pizzas, okay. Its for the eye. Not for my tongue. Basil leaves on pozza, honestly said - I cannot taste them, their ariome is too little, too subtle, it just is not enough especially if there are just 3 or 4 leaves (thats why I do cover my pizza in leaves until it looks like a green meadow, except when I take photos). Its the desperate attempt to make the Basil actually tasteable, noticable. Some lonely leave son the pizza, thats cosmetics, thats eye porn. The tongue does not benefit. At least not mine.
Dried herbs can taste awful. For curry for exmaple, I kill, I love it. But none of the German powders, NONE, they all overstep the red line to physical assault, at best they compare to grinded sawdust. But the original sweet curry powder by Sharwood - that one, and no other! I love it.
For Basil, Oregano, Thyme, Rosmary, and Bärlauch , I prefer a certain German brand and here a special product line of theirs were the herbs get shock frosted in some special manner. Result is a slightly higher price but a tremendously better taste, if you put these on a wet tissue and give them some minutes to pick up moisture, or just put them into the food, it tastes almost as freshly cut herbs. This is especially true for the Basil and Bärlauch (wild garlic), I prefer these to fresh herbs any time. I can just absolutely recommend these. I keep them all in solid stock supply because over the summer they can be sold out until the next harvest.
