The bouquet garni is added during cooking and removed before serving. Its purpose is to add flavour but not to be eaten.

The bouquet garni can also be wrapped in a piece of muslin cloth for easy identification and removal from the other ingredients.

The proportions of the herbs can vary depending on the recipe, but is is wiser to have a greater amount of parsley as both bay and thyme are strong flavours and can overpower the other flavours.

On occasions recipes may call for the ingredients to be expanded to include rosemary, tarragon, chervil or other herbs.

When recording recipes on MyEChef take care to record if you are using fresh or dried herbs so that other users will be able to recreate the same flavour profile from the recipe.

As a general rule of thumb use half the weight of dried herbs of that which you would use for fresh, as dried herbs have a more intense flavour than fresh.