Aromatics are an integral part of cooking. You might not know exactly what they are or what they do, but there’s a really good chance you’ve still used them while you cook.
At the beginning of a recipe, you may have started off by sauteing something like garlic and onions before adding the rest of the ingredients. That’s how you cook with aromatics. They’re different vegetables, spices, and herbs cooked in some sort of fat that serve as the foundation of the flavor for a dish, and you can do a lot of different things with them.
Commonly used aromatics are garlic, onions, ginger, carrots, and peppers. In order to achieve different types of flavors, you want to use different blends of aromatics. If you’re wondering how you go about making the base of a certain cuisine, look to the types of aromatics in this dish. For a French dish, you’ll want to start out with celery, carrots, and onions cooked in butter. For a Chinese dish, you can begin with garlic, green onions, and ginger, all cooked in a form of oil.
Paying attention to different types of aromatics and which ones to use in your cooking is a good way to really take a dish to the next level.