If you grow your own herbs, you are aware that (almost) everything has a season (unless you live in Florida, but even then). But if you grow an evergreen bay tree, you will have learned that fresh bay leaves are a year-round source of fragrance and especially welcome in the months when other herbs must be bought. Bay trees are happy indoors, and I think they may be the perfect houseplant.
I grow my own bay tree in Brooklyn, and the green leaves have become a winter and cold-season staple herb. Fresh bay leaves bear no resemblance—flavor-wise—to the sad, dried version of the herb. They are immensely versatile and can be used in quantity. In fact, I use so many that I recently bought a second tree, as backup.
Here are three simple ways to enjoy fresh bay leaves in quantity. You could even prepare all of these dishes at once for a bay leaf-centric dinner: appetizer, entrée, and dessert.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.
Growing up, I associated bay leaves exclusively with slow-cooked comfort food. And it was always a single leaf that was expected to do all the work of perfuming an entire dish, where meat, potatoes, and carrots were almost always involved. The leaf’s task complete, it would be fished out ceremoniously for me for me to lick clean. Decades later, I deploy bay leaves in sheafs rather than solo.
Several trees with aromatic leaves are referred to as bay; the tree in question is Laurus nobilis, the Mediterranean native. It is hardy from USDA growing zones 8b to 10. Petite, baby trees can be bought online and shipped to your door, but for instant gratification wait for warmer months to purchase the larger trees that local nurseries often stock. (A bay tree in a 3.5-inch pot is $14 from Companion Plants Ohio.) To learn more about how to grow a bay tree (which may be the perfect houseplant), visit our previous article: The Indoor Bay Tree.
