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I have a strange thing about bay leaves -- I don’t like to
cook with dried bay leaves in dishes that they're meant to be eaten. I feel like dried bay
leaves would be too unappetizing to chew. So, I buy fresh bay leaves if they’re
required to be eaten. Strange? I don’t know. I decided to
look into bay leaves a bit more, because no one really questions ‘why’ when it comes
to bay leaves.
According to Wikipedia, there are six different kinds of bay
leaves used in cooking: 1.) Mediterranean bay laurel, 2.) California bay leaf,
3.) Indian bay leaf, 4.) Indonesian bay leaf, 5.) West Indian bay leaf, and 6.)
Mexican bay leaf. Penzey Spices lists a seventh – Turkish bay leaf. (Upon
seeing this, I’m quickly reminded that I also steer clear of Indian bay leaves
because they’re so freaking big. I figure they can’t be flavorful that big. It
has to be like big, flavorless beefsteak tomatoes or something.) On another
note, in the old españolie, one would say ‘laurel,’ but I wonder if that refers
to bay laurel or Mexican bay leaf.
Greeks, Arabs, the French, Southeast Asians, and North
Americans all use bay leaves in cooking soups, stews, seafood, meats, and
sauces. Serious Eats says it used to bring out the taste of warm spices and
meaty flavors. I personally use it in gumbo, red beans, smothered chicken, and
brothy soups. I feel like it doesn’t taste like much, but if you leave it out
of a recipe, you can taste it’s missing something.
Despite popular belief, bay leaves aren’t poisonous, and bay
leaves may be eaten without dying a painful culinary death of humans. Although,
there are sources (i.e. loads of studies from the 1908s) that show bay leaves
can repel and/or kill insects due to cyanide released in the crushed leaves.
(This seems like contradictory information, but I’m not a physician or an
entomologist.)
Most importantly, my thoughts on avoiding the consumption of
dried bay leaves may not be so strange after all; Wikipedia says that because
bay leaves stay stiff throughout cooking, swallowing large pieces can scratch
the digestive tract or cause choking. (So, I’m not so crazy after all!) On a medical tangent, it seems like bay
leaves have been shown to improve insulin function in vitro, for all your
ladies with a case of the babies worried about childhood diabetes. (Other
spices that have been reported to be hypoglycemic include fenugreek, garlic,
turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, ginger, mustard, curry, and coriander.)
Overall, this exercise in facts on bay leaves has proven to
actually create more questions than it answers. Oh well.
References
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_leaf
- http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeysbayleaves.html
- http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/12/spice-hunting-bay-leaf-turkish-californian-how-to-use.html
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022474X8690007X
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2613499/
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