Christoph and Steffi's Food and Travel & Christoph and Steffi's Food and Travel
A small bowl of dried Italian herb blend with separate green-grey flakes of oregano, basil, rosemary and thyme visible, with a spoon and dried sprigs beside it
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condiment ItalianMediterranean VeganVegetarianDairy-freeGluten-freeNut-free make-aheadno-cook

Italian seasoning

The dried herb blend that goes into tomato sauce, meatballs and anything roasted with garlic. Oregano leads, marjoram is the ingredient most blends leave out, and there is no salt in it so you can season separately.

Prep5 min
0 0
Servings40
Cook mode

A house blend, balanced for tomato sauce and roast vegetables

Ingredients

Units
Temperature
Servings
40

Blend

  • 15 g dried oregano, the backbone; Greek or Italian, not Mexican oregano
  • 10 g dried marjoram, the one most shop blends skip, and the one that makes it taste right
  • 10 g dried basil
  • 8 g dried thyme
  • 6 g dried rosemary, crushed or ground; whole needles are unpleasant to bite
  • 5 g dried sage
  • 4 g garlic granules, granules, not powder, which cakes
  • 2 g dried chilli flakes, optional, and a small amount

Dietary labels are a guide, not a guarantee. If you have an allergy, read the ingredients yourself.

Method

  1. Crush the rosemary before anything else. Whole dried rosemary needles are like small splinters. Grind them in a mortar or pulse them alone until they are coarse crumbs.
  2. Combine everything in a jar and shake. That is it.
  3. Store in a sealed jar away from the hob. Heat and light are what kill dried herbs, and the cupboard above the cooker is the worst place in the kitchen.

Notes

  • No salt in the blend. Every blend you can buy is mostly salt, which is why you cannot season with them freely. Keeping salt out means you can add a heaped spoon of this to a sauce without wrecking the seasoning.
  • Marjoram is the missing ingredient. It is oregano’s sweeter, softer relative, and it is what most people are unconsciously missing when a homemade Italian blend tastes flat and dusty.
  • Bloom it in fat. Dried herbs are fat-soluble and taste of very little sprinkled on at the end. Add them to the oil with the onions and garlic, not to the finished pot.
  • It has a shelf life. Dried herbs are stale in about a year, and this makes enough for roughly that. Write the date on the jar.

Ingredient substitutions

  • Mexican oregano is a different plant with a citrus and liquorice edge. It is excellent and it belongs in the Tex-Mex blend on this site, not in this one.
  • Fresh herbs cannot be swapped in one for one. As a rule use three times the volume of fresh for dried, added at the end rather than the beginning.

Sources consulted

Good with

From Christoph Mayer

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