Dill leaves

Dill leaves are known for their flavor and aroma and is used for preparing dishes such as soups, pickles and curries. Dill tastes grassy with a bit of anise-like licorice flavor.

Dill is commonly used to elevate the flavor of various dishes. It’s often paired with salmon, potatoes, and yogurt-based sauces.

When used in cooking, dill leaves will lose flavor the longer it is cooked, therefore it should be added at the last minute only.

Dill grows in bunches. The dill plant (Anethum graveolens) grows to a height of 8-30 inches. The leaves are feathery and fernlike. In the wild, it looks almost like a long grass, with thin, wiry leaves. The dill plant is native to Russia, West Africa, and the Mediterranean.

Dill is rich in several nutrients and has traditionally been used to treat various ailments, including digestive issues, colic in infants, and bad breath.
Dill leaves

Dill in cooking

The leaves and seeds get their slightly bitter, pungent flavor and aroma from carvone, which is also found in caraway and is used to flavor kummel.

Dill seeds are very small and very light. It takes more than 10,000 dill seeds to make an ounce. One tablespoon of dill seed contains more calcium than a cup of milk.

The flavor of the leaves is a mixture of anise, parsley, and celery with a distinctive green bite on the sides of the tongue. The aroma is a clean combination of mint, citrus, and fennel with a touch of sea air.

Native to Southwest Asia and India. Dill has been used the most in cucumber pickles. It was known in ancient Egypt.

Dill is best known for seasoning pickles but is delicious in many recipes for meat, fish and poultry.

The Swedish make a dilly bread and use copious amounts of fresh dill to pickle salmon (gravlax) in a brine of salad oil, sugar, salt, whole white peppercorns, red onion and Cognac.

In Finland they make a buttermilk soup with fresh dill and in Denmark; most open-faced sandwiches are garnished with a sprig of dill. The French use a sprinkling on cakes and breads, but dill is particularly delicious in rye bread used in the same way as caraway.
Dill in cooking

Dill seed and dill weed

Dill (Anethum graveolens) is an annual or biennial herb with a smooth and erect stem; up to I m high; native to Mediterranean region and Asia (southern Russia).

Dill seed and dill weed are available whole or ground but are usually sold in the whole form. It has pungent and faintly aromatic flavor. Dill seeds are generally added in cooking as they require some time for their flavor to permeate the dish.

American dill weed has a strong, fresh, somewhat spicy, aromatic odor and a warm, slightly burning taste. Dill seeds yield an essential oil that is an important flavoring in the pickle industry.

Dill seed oil is obtained by steam distillation of the crushed dried fruits, and dill weed oil is obtained by steam distillation of the freshly harvested herb. Dill seed oil has caraway –like odor and flavor because of the higher carvone content as compared to dill weed oil.

The spice is used as a flavoring for meat, fish, sauces, and pickles: it is a component of meat seasonings. The principle flavor constituents of dill are carvone (40-50%), D-limonene and terpene.
Dill seed and dill weed