While everyone knows that essential oils are helpful for many applications around the home, they may not realize how great it is to cook with essential oils. In fact, in some cases you absolutely should not ingest an essential oil. It is important to know what you are using and whether it is safe to eat or drink. Cleaning, skin and hair care and even medicinal uses are common for essential oils. When you consider that essential oils are often extracted from plants and herbs, you may wonder why you aren’t using them instead of dried herbs in your cooking. Not only can you combine essential oils with other oils to make a savory salad dressing you can also use essential oils to make tasty meats, flavored butters and flavorful casseroles.
Ideas for Cooking With Essential Oils
Imagine starting your day with delicious orange waffles or cinnamon oatmeal made with healthy, natural food grade essential oil of Orange, and Cinnamon. Give your yogurt a kick with a drop of Lemon essential oil or doctor up your coffee creamer with some Peppermint. Look at the flavors you use or buy when you get groceries and see how many store bought items you can replace with essential oils. Store-bought peppermint coffee creamer is more expensive than plain creamer and just a drop or two of essential oil in the plain version gives you the rich flavor your like.
Rosemary is often used for fish and poultry recipes, but if you don’t have fresh rosemary on hand your next best bet is not store-bought dried rosemary. Instead mist a few drops of Rosemary essential oil with your butter and add it to the dish while it’s cooking. The same can be done for different meals, and you can experiment with the different essential oils to make your own unique seasoning.
Italian foods are known for rich herb flavors. Basil, Thyme, Rosemary and more flavors can be incorporated into your food with essential oils extracted from herbs. If you’ve ever used dried herbs from the store you know that it can take quite a bit to give your food the flavor you want. With essential oils all it takes is a couple drops in a recipe.
Want to add a bit of fruity flavor to your recipes? You can get essential oils from Lime, Lemon, Tangerine, Sweet Orange, and Grapefruit. These essential oils make it easy to whip up fruity drinks and flavor everything from homemade sherbet to chicken a l’orange.
Remember Safety First!
Before you start using essential oils for cooking make sure that you read up on them and find out what is safe to use and what is not. Then get in the kitchen and get busy creating tasty, naturally flavored foods and drinks. Not only does using essential oils save money, it is also a healthy option that is better for you than using manufactured flavorings.
If you haven’t tried cooking with essential oils yet, what are you waiting for? Use those oils for more than cleaning and keeping your skin healthy. By the way, they work from the inside out too. Many essential oils are wonderful for digestion and helping prevent infection and bacteria inside your body.
