,” because, well, she made some solid points—why did you have to add them, anyway? Wasn’t it obviously a scam when you had to fish the herb out of the pot at the end to prevent your untimely demise from choking on a pointy leaf? Who decided this was a good plan in the first place? Things started to turn around for me during my time at French culinary school. French chefs, according to my reading materials, really, really love bay leaves. They use them in everything—sauces, soups, stocks.
Dried Bay leaves do bring more nuance to your stockpot, but it turns out, that’s only true if they’re reasonably freshly dried. They’re an herb, after all, and herbs are just plants. They hang onto flavor for a long time, but not forever. Turns out that if you have had the same container of bay leaves in your cabinet since 2010, the flavor has degraded to nothing.
I LOVE bay leaves!
The first time I cooked with a bay leaf it added so much flavor that I used 3 the next time. 3 was too many. Got carried away.