Enhancing Your Garden Cuisine With Essential Oils

Spring’s seeds are finally turning into the fruits of summer! We’ve already worked our way through some of the leafy greens, such as chard, mustard and butter lettuce. Now we’re waiting on our heirloom tomatoes and carrots. Since last year’s blueberry success, you’re confident in this year’s prize of the garden: juicy peaches. Regardless of what specialties you’re nurturing this year, the long months of summer make us pause in gratitude for what the earth offers us each growing season.

For much of the year, our produce is trucked in from far-flung farmlands. Once summer arrives, though, everyone gets the opportunity to claim their birthright as gardeners and cultivators of their own food. What’s best, local summer harvests allow us to experiment with simple, nutritious meals. With very little effort, a meal of fresh vegetables and summer fruits can become a decadent feast. And if your simple cuisine asks for a hint of the exotic, you can harvest a bouquet of flavors from the most unlikely of places: your aromatherapy medicine chest.

When buying aromatic oils, you should always strive to use medicinal-grade oils. These oils come from huge amounts of plant material, so it’s wise to use high-quality oils from reliable sources. Of course we already consider this when we buy aromatherapy products for use on the skin. However, committing to therapeutic-grade oils has a secret plus: you can use these oils in food as well. If you’ve never seen your aromatherapy collection this way, just remember that smell has more control over our sense of flavor than even our taste buds! Keeping that little fact in focus, here are some hassle-free ways to use essential oils in your summer cuisine.

First and foremost, let’s address the issue of food safety. Essential oils are, obviously, plant-derived substances. While you may not want to eat a hunk of frankincense resin straight from the tree, frankincense is still a naturally occurring substance. It is not poisonous in small quantities, but it may make you want to brush your teeth immediately. Many essential oils are expressly dangerous for internal consumption, such as wintergreen and birch, but other oils can be used in small quantities for internal health as well as for cooking. In fact, the FDA has qualified many of the common essential oils as GRAS, Generally Recognized as Safe, substances. This means that, although they are not labeled as food additives, they can be internalized without apparent side-effects. When considering which oils to cook with, this is a good rule of thumb: essential oils of citruses, spices and other commonly-eaten foods are probably going to make good additions to your cuisine. Just be cautious when using essential oils that are known to irritate mucous membranes, such as cinnamon, oregano and peppermint.

Now that you have the beginnings of a delicious summer harvest, take a moment to consider how essential oils might enhance the bounty. Citrus oils, like lemon and grapefruit, mix well with olive oil for salad dressings. Just add a couple of drops to two tablespoons of oil to zest up a summer salad. Lime essential oil can be blended with avocado for guacamole, and mandarin orange oil makes a great addition to spinach salad. And don’t forget beverages! Citrus oils give juices and bubbly waters a great twist. Using equal parts lemon, lime and grapefruit, club soda becomes a refreshing citrus drink without the sugar or artificial sweeteners found in soda. Just remember, as with all essential oils, less is more. This rule applies to cooking, too, so use a light hand when sprinkling in these potent flavors.

What about the group of essential oils derived from well-known cooking spices? Sweet marjoram, basil, ginger, thyme, oregano and bay can all be used to enhance food. Try blending sweet basil oil in with a tomato-mozzarella-Italian parsley pasta, or put a drop of ginger oil in your summer cabbage and mushroom stir fry. Like your coffee with cardamom, Arabian-style? One drop of this oil transforms regular coffee into a delicious treat (hint: try this drink iced!). Cooking spice essential oils tend to be surprisingly strong, so again, don’t be liberal with them. Too much oregano or thyme oil will definitely ruin an otherwise balanced dish, so be careful. It’s also usually a good idea to wait to throw the oils in until the food is nearly done cooking, thereby reducing the chance of evaporation before you’re able to enjoy your creation.

Not surprisingly, essential oils also enhance desserts. Two of the most well-loved dessert flavorings come as essential oils: vanilla bean and cacao. The aromatic oils, however, do not come laden with sugar, nor are they soaking in alcohol, the process used to create extracts. If you find yourself craving a sweet vanilla, try blending your essential oil with honey instead of sugar and see if your craving is curbed. The same can be said for cacao. This bitter, dark essential oil is not a candy bar, but it signals the brain the same way chocolate does. A decadent way of indulging your sweet tooth without jeopardizing your diet is to drip two drops of cacao or vanilla into yogurt and eat like ice cream.

Summer food has a way of reminding us of life’s simple pleasures. From a basic family barbeque to a neighborhood feast, the fruits of the season enable us to take care of ourselves while taking care of the earth, too. Essential oils bring new dimension and ease to already simple fare, and often the addition of an oil adds nuance to a dish without the need for an extra trip to the grocery. So remember: if you find yourself the sudden hostess of an impromptu summer get-together and you’re down to soy milk, just toss water, ice and essential oil of lime in a glass and call it a spritzer. This is summer, after all!

Essential oils such as lemon essential oil and eucalyptus essential oil are available from Ananda Aromatherapy, along with a great many aromatherapy supplies for the home user and natural health professional.