How to make a bouquet garni
The bouquet garni: a pretty bundle of aromatic herbs used to flavour everything from stocks to stews and soups. Here's how to make one.
The bouquet garni, French for ‘garnished bouquet’, can add a beautiful, delicate flavour to any broth. Originally the French used it for two of their signature dishes: bouillabaisse and boeuf bourguignon. Here we’ll show you how to make a bouquet garni, and which recipes to use it in.
Why buy?
It will cost you just shy of £2 to buy a pack of six-or-so bouquet garni ‘sachets’ in the supermarket. Not cheap, and these teabag-style dried herbs just don’t pack the same punch as the fresh stuff.
So how do you make your own? First of all, you’ll need herbs. Traditionally a bouquet garni consisted of just three: parsley (or even better, more flavoursome parsley stalks), thyme, and a bay leaf. Make sure your parsley and thyme have long stems if possible. It makes it easier to assemble.
An assembly job
Lay your three herbs together on a work surface, then tie the bunch together with kitchen twine or string (make sure it’s unwaxed), remembering to leave a ‘tail’ so that you can haul it out of your pot later. Toss the bouquet garni into your saucepan of tasty ingredients, and leave it there until you’ve finished cooking. To stop the bouquet from coming apart (although it probably won’t), you could also wrap the whole bunch in a square of muslin cloth, and tie that together with string.
There’s no specific recipe for the bouquet garni, so feel free to add other herbs too. Basil, chervil, rosemary, black peppercorns and tarragon are popular choices, and some recipes also call for strips of carrot, celery or lemon in the bouquet. The more aromatic the better, really.
A top tip is to nestle the herbs inside a strip of leek, which acts as a kind of wrapping paper for everything (pictured right). But don’t buy a whole leek just for this sake – it’s only an idea if you’re already using leek in your recipe.
Recipes that use a bouquet
Here are five of our favourite recipes which rely on bouquet garni for their flavour. Get cooking!
Pan-seared cod with leek
A rich fish dish from Heston Blumenthal. Serve on a bed of diced waxy potatoes (steamed or boiled), dressed with a simple vinaigrette. Also delicious with buttered leeks and green beans. Heston makes his sauce from bouquet garni-infused fish stock, leeks, potatoes and cream.
Cheese soufflé
Pull this recipe off and you will be rewarded with an amazingly delicate golden brown cheese soufflé, bound to win over any dinner party guest. Here you add the bouquet garni to milk and nutmeg, infusing the mixture as it simmers.
Boeuf bourguignon
An iconic French dish, and one of the first to ever use a bouquet garni. You don't need to use prime cuts of beef for a bourguignon – the braising cuts, such as brisket, silverside, blade, cheek or even shank are more economical and give the dish much more flavour.
Cheddar fisherman’s pie
A warming fish pie, made interesting with hard boiled eggs and velvety courtesy of bechamel sauce. Here the bouquet garni forms part of a ‘Court Bouillon’, which is a flavoured liquid for poaching or quick-cooking foods. Serve piping hot with broccoli and peas.
Venison stew with dumplings
An exquisite venison stew from Tom Kitchin, topped with orange and thyme infused dumplings. Tom adds his bouquet garni to a jumble of diced root vegetables, venison, chicken stock, garlic, bacon lardons and red wine to make a sumptuous stew.
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