Herbs & Spices

Fresh Thyme

Thyme is a common addition to a bouquet garni, a bundle of herbs tied together and added whole to a braise or stock, then removed before serving, a traditional French technique.

Its small, sturdy leaves release flavor slowly, which is why it's often added early in cooking, similar to rosemary, rather than as a delicate finishing herb the way basil or cilantro are used.

French, English, and lemon thyme are among several varieties with genuinely different flavor notes, with lemon thyme carrying a distinct citrus brightness alongside its traditional earthy, savory character.

Thyme belongs to the mint family, a genuinely large botanical family that also includes basil, rosemary, oregano, and sage, which helps explain why so many common Mediterranean culinary herbs share a broadly similar woody-to-tender growth habit and aromatic oil profile.

Lemon thyme, a specific variety carrying a genuine citrus note alongside thyme's typical earthy character, is prized in particular for fish and poultry dishes where a brighter herbal note is wanted without reaching for an entirely different herb altogether.

Thyme honey, made by bees foraging thyme flowers in regions like Greece where wild thyme grows abundantly on hillsides, is considered a genuinely distinct and prized variety of honey, carrying an herbal, slightly savory note that a clover or wildflower honey doesn't have.

Because thyme's tiny leaves are tedious to strip by hand one at a time, a common kitchen trick is to hold the sprig at the top and run fingers down the stem in the opposite direction the leaves grow, stripping most of them off in one quick motion.

Thyme is one of the herbs traditionally included in herbes de Provence, the dried herb blend associated with Southern French cooking, alongside rosemary, savory, and marjoram, a mix built specifically around herbs that grow wild and abundantly in that region's hot, dry climate.

A bunch of thyme sprigs tied together with kitchen twine, sometimes alongside bay leaf and parsley stems as a classic bouquet garni, is a common way French cooking infuses a braise or stock with the herb's flavor while keeping the woody stems easy to fish out before serving.

Wild thyme grows abundantly and freely across much of the Mediterranean, unlike a more cultivated herb, and it's long been foraged directly from hillsides in Greece, Southern France, and parts of the Middle East rather than grown exclusively in a tended garden bed.

Za'atar, the popular Middle Eastern spice blend, is built around dried thyme (or a closely related wild thyme species specific to the region) mixed with sumac, toasted sesame seeds, and salt, a genuinely different way of using the herb than its more familiar role in French and Italian cooking.

Thyme's woody stems continue releasing flavor even after the leaves have mostly been stripped off, which is why some cooks toss the bare stems into a simmering stock or braise rather than discarding them right away, getting a bit more use out of the herb before it's fully spent.