Sage is one of the stronger herbs. Its flavor ranges from mild, warm and spicy to musky, heady and astringent. We commonly cook with it in the cooler months since it pairs well with rich dishes.
Sage’s best match might be with brown butter as a pasta sauce. But it also contrasts the fattiness of pork and sausage, makes roasted chicken more succulent, and complements heartier vegetables like sweet potatoes, squash and zucchini.
Large pieces of uncooked sage leaf and stem aren’t the most pleasant things to chew. You can finely chop them for quick-cooking or last minute appearances. Long cooking and higher heat (like with sage butter) softens the leaves.
To make clean even slices, roughly stack the leaves, roll them up like a cigar and hold them in place on the cutting board.
Then just slice the cigar crosswise into thin strips.
To coarsely chop the leaves for longer cooking dishes, run the knife back and forth across them a couple of times.
For quick-cooking dishes, keep going with the knife until the leaves are finely chopped.
Parsley used to be a gross-looking garnish on the side of your plate. Now, we think of it as one of the best go-to herbs to work into your cooking. It adds a bright but relatively neutral herbal flavor to almost any dish.To prep it, first rinse and shake dry the leaves. Hold the bouquet at an angle with the leaves against the cutting board. Run your knife down the side of the bouquet to slice away the leaves. It's fine to remove some of the tender stems along with the leaves.Now just run your knife back and forth across the pile of leaves, chopping them as coarsely or as finely as you need to. The closer to the end of the cooking you plan to add the parsley, the finer you'll want to chop it. But since parsley's so tender it's usually okay to keep the the chop coarse.
