You may find a recipe that calls for adding a Bouquet Garni – a fancy phrase for fresh herbs tied with string or a bundle of herbs and such wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with string.
This little flavor bundle is perfect for adding flavor to slow-cooked meals and by tying or wrapping the herbs you can keep extraneous bits from finding their way into the broth. Think of this the next time you find a clove or woody stem of thyme – or forbid – a bay leaf in a soup!
The standard advice is to wrap the herbs in cheesecloth because that’s the way it was always done in the olden days when everyone had cheesecloth in their kitchen. I dare say most folks I know, even the really big-time cooks, don’t have cheesecloth in their kitchen cupboard!
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But there is a creative solution using an item that is practically a standard issue in most home kitchens – a coffee filter. CB drinks his coffee every morning and likes it out of a percolator. I prefer one espresso but that’s an entirely different story. Let’s just say that we have plenty of coffee filters on hand.
Even if you don’t drink coffee or have one of those one-cup coffee makers the price of a small bundle of paper coffee filters compared to cheesecloth makes them a good thing to have in your kitchen.
This is so easy!
Place the bundle of herbs in the open filter.
Tie it up. If you read the popular series you may refer to this as “Herbs in Bondage” and smile to yourself. It will be our little secret. ~ ML
Oh and CB is pestering me to remind you the used bundle can be tossed in with the compost because it’s all gonna break down, cotton string and all.