Bay Laurel Oil,India price supplier

Bay Laurel Oil

Bay Laurel is called for in many recipes, and is widely popular for American kitchen use. In French and Italian kitchens, it is indispensable. The leaves can be used fresh in soups, though they will have to be picked out of the soup before serving, as they remain hard even with long boiling. I prefer the subtle fragrance of fresh leaves but the flavor is more concentrated if they are dried beforehand. Once dried they keep for months (if stored in a cool, dry, dark place.) If it is a hassle to fish out the leaves from a stew or soup before serving, dried leaves are easily broken up to fit inside a stainless steel tea-ball or tied into a little cheesecloth bundle, perhaps mixed with other herbs and spices. Bay laurel is present in almost all “Bouquet Garni” recipes that I have seen.

They can be started from seed, but it is VERY difficult to obtain fresh seed in America, and “fresh” is the operative adjective for Bay. The seeds absolutely cannot be allowed to dry out, and they have to be planted at exactly the right stage of development.  Very tricky business – it took me about five years to learn how to germinate bay seeds effectively!

It is much easier - not to mention reliable - to purchase bay laurel seedlings, or well rooted cuttings, from a trusted herb grower.  The reason I emphasize “trusted” is that a couple of years ago I found a display of fairly large plants labeled “Bay Laurel” in a big box store, only to discover on closer examination that they were not Bay laurel at all, but Laurus californica, which looks kinda sorta the same, but which is truly nasty tasting, perhaps even toxic.  Totally useless as a culinary herb.  I wonder how many Americans are now turned off of growing and using Bay Laurel because of their experience growing California Laurel.  (This big box store is one of hundreds of the same name in every State in the Union. I can’t believe that they intentionally misled tens of thousands of customers, but they certainly got screwed by an unscrupulous grower somewhere.)

Bay Laurel likes deep watering to get started, but wants to dry out entirely between waterings. In Zones 4-7, it needs to be treated as a “tender perennial” – that is, brought inside before the first frost in autumn, and kept indoors in a sunny place until danger of frost is past in the spring. It becomes somewhat drought-hardy when long established, especially in the Northwest where rainfall is sufficient except at high summer. They require very well draining soil or they're at some risk of rotting during wet winters. They don't like temperatures below 25 degrees Fahrenheit, but usually bounce back from mild winter damage come spring. In a protected spot, it does very well outdoors in most of Coastal California and Pacific Northwest locations. And of course it will grow well across the southern part of the U.S. in non-soggy spots. Wherever it is protected both from summer sunburn & winter wind-burn it will look dark green and fresh year-round.