How to measure out fresh herbs when the recipe calls for 'a tablespoon of chopped herb'?

Question

My current method includes taking what I think is the right amount from the plant, chopping it up, and then realizing I either chopped too much (and end up throwing away the excess as it's too little to freeze) or too little, and then I go outside again, pick and chop more and I still end up throwing stuff out. I've tried packing the full, fresh herbs into tablespoons first before chopping, but that didn't work either.

Is there a practical way to measure out fresh herbs when recipes call for a tablespoon (or teaspoon, or cup, or...) of chopped herbs?

Answer 1

To answer your question literally: You could use a scale. Get a sub-gram precision scale, carry it to your plant, and pick your herbs with a conversion factor of 7 g per tablespoon.

This will improve over your current method of eyeballing it in the sense that you'll be able to have a consistent taste between batches of food you cook yourself, using your own plants, grown from the same stock under more-or-less similar conditions each year. It will also enable you to better adjust recipes to your taste, in the sense that you can think "last time I used 14 g and it wasn't enough, I will use 20 g this time". If that is what you want, the scale, possibly combined with a logbook of what you cooked and how it turned out, can be a good way to become a better cook. Ironically, this would also be a way to a better eyeballing skill - since you not only get more immediate feedback, but also because it's easier to learn how much a sprig of a given size weighs, rather than what volume it will have, given that it can chop up to different volumes.

I have to warn you though that I wouldn't consider this to be very practical. It's a lot of extra work (fitting sprigs of herbs on a small subgram scale is fiddly!) for a modest gain. The really practical thing would be to continue eyeballing it, and just use whatever amount you picked, no matter if after chopping it turns to be one tablespoon, half a tablespoon, or two tablespoons.

Answer 2

As with many things in cooking (as opposed to baking), exact measurements are sometimes not necessary nor possible. With herbs and spices, there can be a huge variety in intensity. Rather than strictly adhering to "exactly 1 tablespoon, not more, not less", go with the roughly estimated amount, chop it up, then add to taste. Slightly more won't alter the taste dramatically, slightly less can be adjusted by grabbing a sprig more and chopping that up as well.

And, some waste is to be expected with natural products.

Answer 3

Expanding a bit on John Doe's answer: there really isn't any such thing as "one volumetric unit of [herb]". There are a couple of reasons for this. First, density: the mass of some volume of chopped herb is going to depend quite a lot on how finely it is chopped—if you chop something very finely, you are going to be able to get more mass into a given volume, while coarsely chopped herbs are going to have a lot less mass per given volume. This is actually something worth considering more generally when baking—coarse salt has less mass per given volume than very fine salt, flour can have different densities depending on how well settled it is, etc. This is why many baking recipes are in terms of mass (or weight) rather than volume.

Secondly, the flavor of a given herb can vary quite a lot. By way of example (somewhat tangentially), peppers like jalapeños can range from fairly milds to relatively hot. This is somewhat linked to how much moisture they get while growing—in more wet, humid environments, mold and fungi are an issue, and the capsaicin in the pepper has some anti-fungal properties. Herbs are similar. Even herbs from one plant can vary quite a lot, depending on how much water the plant gets, how much sun it gets, how young the harvested leaves are, the season, and so on.

Because there is so much variation in the flavor you are going to get from a given volume of herb, I would suggest that you just not worry about it. You should be adding herbs to flavor—if the final dish tastes right, you've got enough of the herb you want. If not, add more. If you accidentally harvest more than you need, just throw it in—it'll be fine.

Finally, something actionable (if very rough): experiment a bit with your recipes and determine what the "right" amount of a given herb is for a given recipe (ignore the measurement you are given, just cook with feeling). When you prepare the recipe, pay attention to the amount of a given herb you harvest from a plant—think of it in terms of the length (e.g. "use three inches of rosemary") rather than the volume you get in the end. Make notes in the recipes about how much you use. Over time, you'll start to develop an intuition for what "1 teaspoon of rosemary" is supposed to do to a recipe, and you'll be able to convert from these kinds of measurements to something a bit more practical.

Answer 4

You're overthinking it.

There's a surprising amount of complexity in your question, because not every herb is structurally the same. The volume before cutting and after cutting might change depending on the type of herb. In effect, this makes trying to get it right the first time a disproportionately difficult endeavor.

Additionally, herb measurements are always just an approximation anyway. It's always a matter of doing it to taste. As the saying goes, baking is chemistry, but cooking is art. You don't need to measure things to the degree that you're trying to in your question.

Don't get me wrong, I love looking for deterministic measuring methods to increase precision; but it has to be make sense on a cost/benefit scale. Too complex and not a high value, or both, makes it an ineffective way to spend your time and effort.

Instead, rely on the tools nature has provided you with: pattern recognition. With repeated executions, you will start to intuitively understand and thus improve on approximating picking the right amount of sprigs the first time round.