This is the first post for the Eat My Words project on The Girl With A Curl. Once a week, I’ll be posting a culinary term for anyone interested in expanding their cooking vocabulary. From French stewing techniques to Middle Eastern spices, I’ll try to find obscure, interesting, never-heard-of (at least for me!) words from cooking lore to whet the mind’s appetite. Because don’t you agree—I think words are yummy!

This idea came to me after I recently signed up to receive Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Day via e-mail. (If you’re interested, sign up for the same HERE.) It’s the first thing I read in the mornings while I’m still bleary-eyed in bed, and I’m beginning to love the ritual of waking up to a new word every day. Last week, after learning about what the word “piebald” meant, I thought that if I had the chance to learn a new cooking term every so often, it would be good exercise for my brain, for this blog, and for my kitchen!

So, here we go with the very first cooking term for Eat My Words, brought to us by the ultimate foodies—the French.

Eat My Words: “Bouquet Garni”

Translated from French to literally mean “garnished bouquet,” it’s a bundle of aromatic herbs either bound together with string or secured in a sachet made of cheesecloth used to flavor soups, stocks or stews. It’s usually removed before cooking but serves to “steep” in the cooking stock much like tea leaves do in hot water. Sometimes these herbs are encased in leek leaves bound with twine, or a coffee filter if you’d like to be un-French about it.

There’s no prescribed set of herbs for a bouquet garni, but this can include parsley, thyme and bay leaf. Any other number and kinds of herbs such as celery, peppercorns, rosemary, thyme, tarragon, etc., are sometimes added to give the cooking stock more complex flavors.

Bouillabaisse and Ossobuco are the more popular dishes that may use a bouquet garni.

* Want to hear how it sounds? Hear it HERE!

—-
Stay tuned for more short, sweet, spicy, saucy, eatable words!