Many spicy plants have been known to people since time immemorial. Initially, they were used for various rituals, and only later they began to be actively used in cooking and medicine.
Types of spice plants
Spices have long and firmly entered our daily lives. They have become so familiar to us that we do not even notice how often we use them. In the meantime, we prepare food every day or preserve food using spicy plants. All of their diversity can be divided into the following types:
- Spicy-aromatic.
- Spicy flavors.
Spicy-aromatic plants have an original smell. And spicy flavors have a specific taste.
In the course of research, it was found that spicy-flavoring plants and spicy-aromatic plants have antiseptic, preservative, medicinal and bactericidal properties. The composition of spices includes essential oils and other very valuable substances that improve the culinary properties of products, as well as excite taste buds, the activity of the digestive system, increase the digestibility of food, cause appetite, and have a beneficial effect on the metabolic process and on the whole body.in general.
Most of them are imported to us from afar, since many plants (spicy) grow only in the subtropics or tropics. But even on the territory of our country there are many representatives of the family of spicy plants growing in the wild. Yes, and in our gardens it is customary to grow a variety of herbs that are successful not only for eating, but also used in various industries.
Variety of spices
Spice plants are divided into six groups:
- Sharp and bitter, with a slight aroma. These include horseradish, pepper, mustard and others.
- Bitter, but with a sharp spicy aroma - hops, allspice, ginger, cloves, laurel, calamus, hyssop and others.
- With a very strong, but not at all spicy sweet aroma and a light spicy taste - nutmeg, cinnamon, sweet clover, lovage, coriander.
- With a light and subtle spicy smell - marjoram, savory, cumin, cardamom.
- Customized - onion, garlic, dill, fennel, sage, anise, mint.
- Drinks are plants used to make drinks.
To give the drink a noble aroma and specific taste, different cultivated plants are used. For example, marjoram, peppermint, rosemary officinalis, basil, thyme, fennel, dill, coriander. For the same purpose, wild plants are also used: wormwood, calamus, angelica, bison, elecampane, barberry, licorice, cranberries, and currants. At the same time, completely different spicy plants usedifferent parts: seeds, flowers, roots, leaves.
Using spice plants
Many spicy plants provide products for various household purposes. For example, some of them are used as salad ingredients (lovage, barago, borage leaves, nasturtium, mint, dandelion).
Some plants with a spicy smell are used in the pharmaceutical and perfume industries, because they contain essential oils and biologically active substances (basil, lemon balm, savory, dill, mint). They have strong medicinal properties, and therefore are used as medicines.
Spice-aromatic plants and spicy-flavoring plants are used for cooking fried, boiled or fresh. Their sour, bitter, spicy, spicy and aromatic substances flavor food, giving it an original taste, improving taste properties. In general, this helps to improve the absorption of food by the human body.
Spicy medicinal plants
Many spicy-aromatic plants have medicinal properties, and therefore they have been used as medicinal for many centuries. Biologically active substances are present in many wild and cultivated plants, they have a beneficial effect on the entire body as a whole, normalizing the functioning of individual organs.
Let's give an example of such herbs. The same mint is a medicinal and spicy plant, which is very often found in summer cottages and gardens. Oregano, katovnik, coriander, thyme, bergenia also have spicy medicinal properties.properties.
Spice harvesting
Leaves of spice plants, seeds, roots, flowers can be collected in nature, or you can plant some of them in your backyard. Caring for them does not require any colossal knowledge and skills. In general, there are about three hundred species of plants that are used as spices.
Spice plants (photos are given in the article) are grown not only by amateur gardeners, but also on industrial plantations.
In our latitudes, gardeners most often plant the following herbs: basil, fennel, lovage, marigolds, cilantro, mint, thyme, oregano, celery and many others. In cooking, seeds of spicy plants, roots, flowers and stems are used. When making preparations of such herbs, you need to know when and what parts of the plant to collect, and how to do it correctly. For example, if you need to prepare the ground part, then it should be done after the plant has fully developed (as a rule, this happens in the summer). Raw materials are collected in the evening so that there is no dew. Before that, you should not water the plants, but after harvesting, you need to fill the beds well, which will give impetus to a new stage in the development of the culture.
You should know that all spices should be harvested in moderation. If you have a small family, then you should not be zealous. The fact is that dried essential oil herbs are not stored for more than a year, and therefore it is better to harvest a fresh crop every season than to use perennial harvestings that have lost most of their useful properties.
Perennial spice plants
Before, the assortment of spices on store shelves was not as wide as it is now. Now in any supermarket you can find a good selection of them. And home gardens are now growing a lot of spices, not just dill and parsley, as seed shops offer a wide variety of seeds.
Basil is very popular right now. Some mistakenly consider it a purely southern culture, but this is not entirely true. Such a plant can also be grown in central Russia.
There are different types of basil - bunch-shaped, spoon-shaped, large, small. All varieties differ in aroma, color and taste. The classic plant goes well with meat and cheese. But a plant with a lemon smell is suitable for desserts, drinks and salads. Basil with a clove aroma is used to make marinades. Young plants at the very beginning of flowering have the most stable aroma.
In nature, there are low and high varieties of basil, with green, purple, smooth, corrugated, small and large leaves. Crop seeds for greenery can be sown in open ground at the same time as cucumbers.
Basil is a very beautiful plant, so it is not necessary to plant it in the beds. It is enough to place several plants in the middle of flower arrangements.
Coriander
Coriander (cilantro) is a very popular crop. It is grown not only for its greenery, but also for seeds. If you are a fan of fresh cilantro greens, then the seeds can be sown several times: from springand until mid-summer, maintaining time intervals of two to three weeks. For cultivation, last year's seeds are used. Fresh ones do not sprout. The flowering of the plant begins with a sufficiently long daylight hours. If the seeds are sown at a time when the day is already beginning to shorten, then there will be no flowering.
If growing cilantro for its seeds, the umbels of the plant should be cut when they turn golden. It is better not to wait for full ripening, as the seeds may spill out. Umbrellas are dried and then threshed.
At home, coriander seeds are stored in a glass jar, like any spice. Grind cilantro in small portions in a coffee grinder as needed. Ground seeds quickly lose their smell.
Parsley
Root parsley is grown to produce white roots. They are crushed and put in soups, stews, stews. The leaves of the plant are also widely used in cooking. Culture refers to perennial plants. Root crops are frost-resistant, and therefore easily winter in the ground, and the leafy part even tolerates light autumn and spring frosts. For the growth of parsley, the optimum temperature is 16-18 degrees. At higher temperatures, the development and growth of the culture slows down, but there is an accumulation of aroma and essential oils in the leaves. There are more than ten varieties of culture: Eagle, Vostochnaya, Alba, Pikantnaya, Lyubasha and others.
Vegetable thyme
Thyme is often also called Bogorodsk grass. It belongs to perennial plants. Thyme forms lush thickets and has a characteristic aroma. When the plant blooms, its stems are cut with a knife.
Thyme is a beautiful compact shrub. But he winters not always well. An evergreen plant even at the end of winter has green foliage, but if the soil does not thaw for a long time, it may die from drought. It turns out that the leaves in the sun give off a lot of moisture, and the roots cannot get moisture from the frozen soil. In such cases, you can try to water the plant with warm water and cover with peat. Thyme on the site can live up to three years if he likes the place allotted for him.
Lovage
Lovage is a perennial plant growing up to two meters in height. The culture has fleshy roots and fairly large leaves. The plant is very stable, it is not afraid of even harsh winters. Ground parts tolerate short-term frosts down to minus eight degrees. In cooking, not only the roots of the plant are used, but also the leaves. Fresh greens are put in salads, seeds are added to vegetables in brine, and roots are used as a spicy seasoning. The most commonly grown varieties of lovage are Don Juan, Hercules, Amur, Leader, Udalets.
Oregano
Oregano is a spice with which there is some confusion. In the standard version, this name means marjoram. But we offer oregano under that name. Of course, both plants are spicy herbs, but they differ greatly in taste. Their leaves and inflorescences are widely used in cooking, adding to salads, pizza, meat dishes,sauces and pastes.
Marjoram flavored duck, roast goose, put it in homemade sausage. The plant was even nicknamed sausage grass, since in many countries it is the main seasoning in sausages. Marjoram perfectly complements potato soups, fried poultry, liver, mushrooms and lamb dishes. Marjoram is grown in seedlings, sowing seeds in April. The first shoots appear only after three weeks. At the end of May, seedlings are transplanted into open ground, when there is no threat of frost. Plants are harvested at the beginning of the mass flowering period. Stems with inflorescences are cut at a height of about five centimeters above ground level and dried in a dark but ventilated place.
Tarragon, or tarragon
Tarragon (tarragon) is a cold-resistant plant that grows in the form of a bush up to one meter high with a large number of shoots. If the plant is not transplanted, then it is able to grow for five to seven years. Culture does not like too damp places.
All the spice plants we have listed are very sun-loving and prefer to grow in open areas. But they are dried only in the shade in a cool place, because at a temperature of more than 35 degrees aromatic substances disappear.
Cardamom
Cardamom is a spicy plant of the ginger family, which is nothing more than a herb. The culture grows in the wild in South India (in moist forests). Major and Indian cardamom are especially valued in the world spice markets. The fruits of the plant look like a box. Pick them up a littleunripe and then dried in the sun. For flavoring confectionery and flour products, the boxes are ground. Green fruits have a stronger aroma than white ones.
Black cardamom
Black cardamom is a completely different spice. The fruits (boxes) are harvested from the atotite tree, which belongs to the ginger family. Several varieties of such trees grow in the south of China and in the mountainous regions of China. The pods of the plant are usually sold as a whole, they have a pleasant aroma with a subtle hint of camphor and haze.
Also known is black cardamom from Madagascar, Cameroon and Somalia. The French put this spice in liqueurs ("Chartreuse", "Curaçao"), the Germans add it to the mixture for making the famous Nuremberg gingerbread. It was from the Germans that the tradition of adding cardamom to Easter cakes came to us.
The spice is most popular in the East. For example, in India, cardamom is added to all dishes and even drinks.
Turmeric
Turmeric is a bright yellow spice. It is obtained from the rhizomes of a plant of the ginger family. The spice has a slightly pungent bitter, but pleasant taste. Turmeric is incredibly popular in England, India, Central Asia, China, Azerbaijan. The spice is often used instead of expensive saffron, although their properties are still different. Dishes made with turmeric last longer. The spice is used to cook beef, lamb and chicken.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is an evergreen tree that reaches a height of 15 meters. Forobtaining the famous spice is not harvested by fruits and leaves, everything is much more complicated. A two-year-old tree is cut down and a stump is left, from which young shoots appear the next year. As soon as they reach a meter height, they are cut and the bark is removed from them. And take only the inner layer. Drying, thin strips are twisted into a tube. In this form, cinnamon goes on sale.
Cinnamon, as a spice, can be divided into Ceylon (noble) and Chinese (cassia). The first is considered more expensive and valuable, since it is made only from the inner layer. But cassia is made from the whole bark, and therefore its taste is more burning and sharp. Cassia is sold in our stores as a more affordable and cheaper option. Although it is worth noting that noble cinnamon is much better both in chemical composition and in taste.
Instead of afterword
In our article, we have given examples of only some of the spice plants from all of their huge variety. Spices have long been used by people in cooking and as medicines, and therefore are indispensable helpers in everyday life.
