Mentha (Mint Family)
Posted on 16 April 2008 by admin 
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Common Names: mint, spearmint, peppermint, curly mint, ginger mint, apple mint
Parts Used: Leaves and flowers
Leaf colors range from dark green and gray-green to purple, blue and sometimes pale yellow.
The peppermint leaf is rarely used in cooking, but the oil is used for making sweets and medicinal flavourings.
Culinary Uses:
The leaves have a pleasant warm, fresh, aromatic, sweet flavour with a cool aftertaste.
Spearmint is milder and is better for other cooking purposes, enhancing meat, fish, and vegetables. Use the specialty mints in salads, fruit dishes, teas, and as a garnish.
Mint leaves are used also in teas, beverages, marmalades, syrups, confectionary, ice creams and chewing gums.
In Middle Eastern cuisine mint is used on lamb dishes. In British cuisine, mint sauce is popular with lamb.
Mint is a necessary ingredient in a popular tea in northern African and Arab countries.
Medicinal uses:
Peppermint is an excellent digestive aid. It is specific for use in treatment of morning sickness and motion sickness.
Use it as an inhalant to treat stuffy noses and congestion.
It helps relieve the discomfort of painful periods.
Mint was originally used as a medicinal herb to treat stomach ache and chest pains.
Mint tea also is a strong diuretic.
Menthol and mint essential oil are also much used in medicine as a component of many drugs, and are very popular in aromatherapy.
Cosmetic uses:
Mint essential oil and menthol (wide range) used as flavourings in breath fresheners, antiseptic mouth rinses, toothpaste, soaps and perfumes.
Some people added to their baths for relax and to stimulate their bodies.
Other uses:
Mint leaves are often used by many campers to repel mosquitoes, extracts from mint leaves have a particular mosquito-killing capability.
Mint oil is also used as an environmentally-friendly insecticide for its ability to kill some common pests like wasps, hornets, ants and cockroaches. Also rats and mice dislike mint.
Tip:
Herbs are a familiar ingredient in cooking but it is so easy to just use the familiar ones each time. Here is a guide to some of the more unusual ones around. All are available fresh or dried but remember that fresh herbs have a milder flavour and use roughly 15ml (1 tbsp) of fresh herbs to 5ml (1 tsp) dried.
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Tags | Herbs, Mentha, Mint Family, Peppermint, Spearmint
