Tarragon is part of the classic Béarnaise sauce and the French herb mixture "Fines herbes" and therefore belongs in every good herb garden. The perennial herb is very easy to care for and grows more luxuriantly than some garden owners would like.
The best time to harvest
You can start harvesting your tarragon in the spring if the plant is from the previous year. With freshly sown cabbage, the start of the harvest naturally depends on the time of sowing. Harvest time ends with the onset of winter.
Shortly before flowering, the essential oil content is particularly high and the aroma is therefore at its most intense. If you want to harvest tarragon for drying, for making herbal vinegar or for pickling in oil, then you should cut it at this time.
The use of tarragon
The French tarragon tastes milder and sweeter than the German, but both varieties are good for flavoring sauces, fish dishes, poultry and salads. Tarragon is particularly popular in Mediterranean cuisine. But you can also use it to make a tarragon vinegar or mixed herb vinegar or a tarragon oil. Russian tarragon is less suitable for use in the kitchen, its taste is more bitter and grassy.
Preserve tarragon
You can dry tarragon without any problems. To do this, however, you should free the leaves from the stems so that the aroma remains in the leaves. However, the taste is less intense than fresh cabbage. Tarragon also freezes well. In hot dishes you can use frozen tarragon just like fresh cabbage.
However, tarragon can be preserved in oil just as well. The oil is great for flavoring salads. Another method of preservation is to preserve it with vinegar. Tarragon vinegar is also suitable for the preparation of fine salads.
The essentials in brief:
- use fresh as possible, then the taste is more intense
- Dry leaves without stems
- Tarragon oil or tarragon vinegar for salads
tips and tricks
If you have plenty of tarragon in the garden, then prepare a tarragon vinegar. To do this, add herb harvested shortly before flowering to wine vinegar and let it steep for a few weeks.
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