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Summer savory
Satureja hortensis · Herb
40 pairings
Summer savory (Satureja hortensis) is a slender, peppery annual herb of the mint family, warm and aromatic with a flavour poised between thyme and marjoram and a distinct spicy bite. The classic "bean herb," it is the traditional seasoning for legumes, sausages and slow-cooked dishes across Europe and the Levant.
Picking a good onedrag
Just cut, sprigs standing stiffBlackened and slimy, leaves shedding
Shop freshThe state you buy it in, and the workhorse: whole sprigs into the bean or lentil pot, into sausage meat, stuffings and slow braises, pulled out before serving once the stems go wiry. Two things are worth being exact about. What you are holding: summer savory is sold as a cut food herb and also as a garden-centre bedding annual, and a plant grown for the border may carry pesticides never cleared for food use — a property of that article, not of the species, and no washing fixes it. Buy it sold as food, or grow it from a food-grade start. And the herb is not its oil: the leaf is an ordinary culinary seasoning used by the sprig, while the distilled essential oil is a concentrated carvacrol product that irritates skin and mucous membranes, and it is that oil at medicinal strength, not seasoning, worth avoiding in pregnancy. Cooking quantities of the herb are food. People who react to oregano, thyme or mint may react to savory too. Summer savory is also not winter savory — the perennial is coarser and more resinous, so they do not swap one for one.Everyday best
Where it came fromYour own plant, or a pot from an edible-herb grower
The leafStill grey-green, a few yellowing leaves low down
The stemFirm and a little wiry, cut end starting to dry
How the bunch hangsTips just begin to nod, the rest still holds up
Smell at a rubbed leafClearly peppery, but you have to bruise it harder
What to look for, from just cut, sprigs standing stiff to blackened and slimy, leaves shedding.