Mint

A herb that hybridises so freely that its named varieties are a moving target, and one of very few used equally in savoury food, sweets and drinks across the whole world.

Where it comes from

Mints cross with each other readily — peppermint is itself a natural hybrid of spearmint and water mint — which is why named varieties are propagated from cuttings and why a mint patch left alone drifts over the years.

It runs through Middle Eastern and North African cooking, where it is a savoury herb and a tea; through South Asian chutneys; through Southeast Asian salads and rolls; and through British cooking, where the mint-with-lamb pairing is old and remains regionally peculiar.

Varieties

• Spearmint — The cooking mint. Sweet and mild — tabbouleh, salads, mint tea, chutney.
• Peppermint — High in menthol, cold and sharp. Confectionery and tea rather than cooking.
• Moroccan mint — A spearmint selection grown for tea.
• Vietnamese mint / rau răm — Not a mint at all but used like one. Peppery and hot.
• Pennyroyal — Strongly flavoured and toxic in quantity — historically used, now avoided.
• Dried mint — One of the few soft herbs that dries well, and a distinct ingredient — Turkish and Levantine cooking use it deliberately rather than as a substitute.

In the kitchen

Dried mint and fresh mint are not interchangeable. Dried is dusty, warm and savoury and belongs in a broth or a yoghurt sauce; fresh is bright and cold and belongs at the end.

Mint blackens where it is bruised and oxidises quickly once cut. It goes in at the last moment, torn rather than chopped fine.

In hot tea, mint is steeped briefly — over-steeped it goes bitter and grassy, which is why Maghrebi mint tea is poured from a height and served fast.

Choosing and keeping

Mint spreads by runners and takes over a bed within two seasons. Grown in a pot, always.

Mint is tagged on 57 dishes from 42 countries in the atlas. These notes are written from general knowledge and carry no per-fact citation — see About.