Like most herbs, dill can add an amazing flavor to meals, often elevating them to a completely new level. The effect is especially true for fresh dill, as it offers an interesting citrus-like flavor with mild grassy notes and a touch of anise.
Dill is a delicate herb and doesn’t withstand cooking well. Because of this, you’ll typically be adding it right at the end of your cooking or using it with cold dishes. It’s best to start with just a small amount, as fresh dill has a surprisingly strong flavor.
Thankfully, learning how to use fresh dill isn’t that tricky. To use the dill, you simply need to cut it finely and then either mix it into meals or sprinkle it on top. Salmon, potatoes, pickles, and cucumbers are all excellent with the flavor of dill. You can also experiment with dishes like dill pesto, dill sauce, or borscht.
Once you’ve used fresh dill in a few recipes, you should start to become familiar with the flavor profile and what to expect. After this point, it gets easier to guess which ingredients will naturally pair with dill. You’ll soon be able to use the herb without hesitation.
How To Use Fresh Dill (13 Exciting Ways!)
Use It With Potatoes
Potatoes have a pretty mild flavor, which makes them an excellent vehicle for other ingredients, including fresh herbs. Here, your dill really gets the chance to shine.
One of the simplest approaches is to boil or roast your potatoes, then serve them with butter and freshly cut dill. Some recipes also use a little lemon juice or lemon zest. The lemon naturally complements the dill and gives your meal a vibrant edge.
You can also experiment with fresh potato salad. Many potato salads already rely on herbs, so why not make a version with dill? You can take this approach with a traditional mayo-based potato salad or one that relies on a vinaigrette instead.
Try Dill Pesto
Pesto is traditionally made using pine nuts, basil, olive oil, and garlic. While that version is delicious, it also gets boring after a while.
In practice, you can make pesto using almost any type of herb, including dill. The basic recipe for doing so is the same each time. You’re simply changing the herb of choice and perhaps also the type of nut you use.
Many versions of dill pesto also add some lemon zest. You’ll see this theme often, as lemon and dill work together extremely well.
Make Dill Sauce
Dill is also excellent as part of a sauce. Here, you’re typically combining the dill with creamy ingredients like yogurt and mayonnaise, then adding a few extra ingredients for flavor, such as garlic and lemon juice.
This combination of ingredients allows the dill to truly stand out. Plus, you end up with a simple creamy sauce that you can use in many different situations. Why not serve this sauce over roast vegetables, with chicken, or perhaps with salmon?
Pair It With Salmon
Salmon and dill is a classic pairing, one that isn’t limited to dill sauce. You can even simply make a bed of fresh dill sprigs and then bake the salmon on top of it. Doing so infuses the salmon with vibrant flavors from the dill, while requiring little effort on your part.
Another approach is to sprinkle salmon with chopped fresh dill and squeeze over some lemon juice. Honestly, there isn’t a wrong way to go – any dish that pairs dill and salmon is going to taste amazing.
Make A Delicious Dill Dip
A dill dip follows the same idea as dill sauce. The biggest difference is the texture, as dill dip needs to be thicker than dill sauce for it to be useful.
Sour cream and mayonnaise are often used as the base of such dips. This combination of ingredients gives you the texture you need without overpowering the dill at all.
Of course, there’s plenty of room to experiment. You can easily make a vegan version of the dip by relying on vegan sour cream as the base ingredient.
There’s also honey dill sauce, which can be used as a dip or a sauce. The simplest version relies on mayonnaise, dill, and honey, and you can always experiment from there. For example, adding a little lemon juice provides an engaging tartness to the dip, while garlic powder increases the savory notes.
Include Dill With Your Pickles
Dill is most famously associated with pickles. Some versions rely on dill seeds, while others include fresh dill sprigs instead (you can even use a combination of the two if you wish).
Fresh dill provides a brighter and more delicate dill flavor with some grassy notes, while dill seeds tend to be warmer and earthier instead. The seeds also have a more potent flavor that generally lasts longer than the flavor from fresh dill.
The more intense flavor of dill seeds is often appealing, yet sometimes you’ll want the subtleness of fresh dill instead. Why not experiment to find the style that you like the most?
Make Tzatziki
Tzatziki is a simple and delicious Mediterranean dip. It uses strained yogurt as the base ingredient, which is then complemented by cucumber, garlic, and lemon juice. Fresh herbs can be included too and dill is one of the most popular of these.
Using yogurt as a base ingredient makes tzatziki similar to the other dill dips and sauces we’ve been talking about. However, for tzatziki, dill ends up being a background flavor, rather than the most noticeable one.
Try Cucumber Salad
A cucumber salad is another option for combining cucumber and dill together in the same dish. Some versions rely on a creamy dressing, while others take the vinaigrette route instead.
Regardless of the style, you end up with a delicious and refreshing salad that’s perfect on a hot summer’s day.
Of course, this isn’t the only time you might use dill. The herb’s bright and grassy flavor profile works well in many salads. Using it can be as simple as chopping dill and mixing it through your salad or preparing a dill-based salad dressing.
Bake Fish On A Bed Of Dill
Earlier, we talked about serving salmon with dill, which can include cooking the salmon on a bed of fresh dill. This same approach applies to other types of fish too.
In fact, baking white fish like cod or tilapia on a bed of dill could be even better than salmon due to the mild flavor of many types of white fish. This mild flavor helps the dill to really stand out.
Make Dill Butter
Compound butter is excellent for cooking, as it gives you the flavor of fresh herbs, plus all the properties of butter. This butter lasts about five days when stored in the fridge, but you can freeze it to make it last longer (which is an excellent way to preserve your fresh herbs).
The approach is a versatile one, as you can include just one type of herb or multiple. You can even add other ingredients for extra flavor. For example, you might make compound butter that includes fresh dill and lemon zest. Or one that pairs fresh dill and garlic.
Use It With Rice
Dill is also an excellent way to add extra flavor to rice. As with potatoes, rice doesn’t have much taste of its own, so the dill gets the chance to shine.
To begin, try using roughly 1/3 cup of chopped fresh dill for every cup of uncooked rice in your recipe. Of course, you might need to either increase or decrease the amount of dill, as everyone has their own flavor preferences.
Don’t forget about lemon juice either. This always works well with dill and will nicely complement your rice too.
Try Dill Water
Have you heard of gripe water before? It contains a variety of different herbs, like fennel, chamomile, lemon balm, and dill, and is promoted as a way of helping with infant challenges like gas, hiccups, and teething pain.
You can make your own version at home using dill and other fresh herbs. Or, you can experiment with dill water. This is often made with just dill and water, but might have some of the same benefits.
There isn’t much evidence for health benefits from dill water, but some people use it regularly, suggesting that there are some benefits. Just be sure to check with the infant’s pediatrician first, as even herbs can be risky in some circumstances.
Make Borscht
Borscht is a popular Ukrainian soup that relies on stock, vegetables, and seasoning. It’s an unusual soup, as it has a deep red color from beets, along with a distinctly sour flavor.
While dill isn’t an essential ingredient in the soup, it is a popular addition. It’s often added right at the end of cooking or used as a garnish to make the soup look even better.
5 Delicious Recipes Using Fresh Dill
Dilly Ranch Dressing
This Dilly Ranch Dressing recipe allows you to make ranch dressing at home without any powdered mix. Much of the recipe’s flavor comes from dill, although other herbs help to make it even more exciting.
Mayo, buttermilk, and sour cream are used to provide the creamy base for the dressing, while ingredients like lemon juice and vinegar give it the edge that it needs.
As the creator says, you’re unlikely to go back to regular store-bought ranch dressing once you’ve tried this version. So, why not give it a go?
Salmon In Phyllo With Dill Sauce
Remember how we talked about pairing salmon with dill? Well, this Salmon in Phyllo with Dill Sauce is one of the best examples of this combo.
It isn’t even a complicated recipe to make, especially as you’re using frozen spinach as one of the base ingredients. You don’t need to make the phyllo dough yourself either. You can easily buy it and then follow the instructions in the recipe.
The salmon isn’t even the only selling point of the recipe. There are also details about how to make a creamy dill sauce. This is served over the salmon parcels but could just as easily be served on top of other dishes.
Creamy Dill Potato Salad
It’s hard to beat a potato salad at a picnic (or at most other events, for that matter). Using fresh herbs is one of the easiest ways to make the recipe exciting, so it’s no wonder that this Creamy Dill Potato Salad stands out so much.
The recipe is also a pretty simple one. Mayonnaise and sour cream are used to provide creaminess to the salad, while mustard and lemon juice offer contrasting notes. As one commenter mentioned, you can make the potato salad even more exciting by adding a little parmesan and some crumbled bacon.
Hanoi Fried Fish With Turmeric And Dill
This Hanoi Fried Fish with Turmeric and Dill offers a different way to include dill with fish. Notably, the recipe focuses on fish that has been fried with turmeric and dill. As well as the fish itself, there are rice noodles, toasted sesame crackers, and even a shrimp dipping sauce.
The ingredients used and flavor profile make this an unusual meal, different from any you might have tried before. Still, this isn’t a reason to avoid it. This is still a delicious meal, one that you’re likely to love.
If nothing else, trying new dishes is rarely a bad idea. Even if you don’t particularly like the flavors, you’ve had a new and memorable experience, which is valuable in itself.
Dill Pickle Dip
Finally, we have this Dill Pickle Dip. As the name suggests, the dip relies not just on dill itself, but also on pickles. The pickles are chopped into small pieces, which provide bursts of flavor as you’re enjoying the dip. There’s even a little pickle juice included to enhance the dip further.
Other ingredients are more familiar choices for a dip, including cream cheese, sour cream, and garlic powder.
The recipe also includes details about how you can tweak the dip. For example, you can easily convert it into a cheese ball or make it less thick by adding more pickle juice. You can also use extra ingredients to enhance the flavor, like paprika or perhaps some chili powder.
Dried Dill Vs Fresh Dill
Fresh dill tends to have a vibrant and bright flavor, with plenty of aromatic and grassy notes. Dried dill, on the other hand, is more concentrated with less vibrancy and more earthy tones.
The drying process also impacts shelf life, making dried dill last much longer than the fresh version. This is perfect if you don’t use dill very often.
Fresh dill and dried dill can be used interchangeably, but you’ll need to use them in different amounts. Notably, you should use just one teaspoon of dried dill for every three teaspoons of fresh dill in your recipe, due to the difference in concentration.
The two types also have different strengths. Fresh dill works best at the end of cooking and is most suited to vibrant dishes, salads, and seafood. In contrast, dried dill is better suited to rich savory dishes, including soups and stews.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Long Does Fresh Dill Last?
If kept in the fridge, fresh dill can last up for roughly two weeks. One way to help preserve it is to wash and dry the dill, then wrap it in damp paper towels and store it in an airtight container. The container of dill can then be placed in the crisper drawer. Alternatively, standing the dill in a glass of water in the fridge helps to keep it fresh.
Can You Freeze Fresh Dill?
Freezing dill is as simple as washing and drying sprigs of dill, then laying them flat on a tray and placing them in the freezer. After a few hours, you can transfer them to a labeled freezer bag or container and then put them back in the freezer. You can also freeze fresh dill in butter or olive oil.
What Are The Best Substitutes For Fresh Dill?
Fresh fennel is one of the best substitutes for dill, partly because it comes from the same family. You can also experiment with thyme, parsley, or rosemary. However, each herb has its own distinct flavor, which will impact the taste of your meal.
Is Dried Dill As Good As Fresh?
While dried dill and fresh dill are different, one isn’t really better than the other. It’s largely a matter of choosing the right type for your recipe. For example, dried dill is much better in stews and soups, while fresh dill is ideal with fish and in salads.
When Should You Add Dill To A Recipe?
Fresh dill is delicate and quickly loses its flavor. Because of this, you should add it right at the end of cooking. You could even use dill as a garnish, which ensures it retains all of its flavor and freshness.
Substitutes For Vegetable Oil