I love the smell of dill. It’s such a fresh vibrant smell that reminds me of summer.
Besides liking its fragrant aroma, why do I grow dill and do I use it for? My mom would always grow it to use in her pickles but I can’t remember it being used in anything else. I grow it for my pickles too; but I use very little of what I grow. So what do we do with the rest of it?
We try to use it as seasoning in some of our cooking. I say try because more often than not we forgot about it or are too lazy to go pick it. Dill pairs well with potatoes. Sometimes we will throw some of the leaves/franz (the fernie stuff) in with potatoes while they boil/steam, or cut it fine and season pan fried potatoes with it. (I love pan fried tators and dill… yum!!) On occasion I’ve used it to make my own dill dip and if I would plan ahead more often I would do this a lot more as I love dill dip. I’ve never put it in soup or salads but they’re both viable options.
Last year the dill in the garden didn’t grow too well so we didn’t have too much good quality dill left at the end of the season. The cool weather early in the season stunted its growth and all the rain weakened its flavor - it was disappointing.
Two years ago in the fall I picked a bunch of dill and dried it the food dehydrated. The best part about this was the entire house smelt like dill for about a week. It dried and stored well but the flavor just wasn’t there.
This fall I decided to freeze it. One weekend early in the fall I picked what was still healthy and had survived the frost. I only picked the franze as I’ve never used the heads/flowers except for pickling. After picking it, I gave it a quick bath and air dried it. Once dry it was given a quick chop, put in an air tight container (I used a freezer jam container) and put in the freezer. The idea behind this method is whenever we wanted dill all we had to do is take the container out of the freezer, open it and sprinkle some dill.
Last night with dinner we had fried tators will dill, the entire house ended up full with the pungent smell of dill. It was wonderful! It reminded me of being in the garden on a hot summer day. It was a smell that broke my will power to put off “anything garden” until March as I ended up spending the night on the couch seed shopping and planning the garden.
Cooking Tip: As the chef house (aka Steve) has discovered, dill does not do well with excessive heat. If you add it too soon in your cooking you will lose all of its flavor. (This could be why I had a loss of flavor when I used the dehydrated a few years ago.)
