Nine great things to do with boring old parsley

Poor parsley. Its songmates sage, rosemary and thyme are all so much more evocative—each one brings a scent, even a feeling, to mind, while the ear just elides parsley. And who doesn’t love basil? Even cilantro inspires fear and loathing, at least. Parsley’s barely thought of as an herb at all.

In American cooking, parsley’s most frequent role is as an absolutely expendable extra—a mere garnish. Picture any of millions of diner dishes with a sprig of parsley, valiantly curly and bright, consigned to a corner with an equally arbitrary half-moon of orange. You might eat the orange slice; you definitely don’t touch the parsley.

The party that is herbes de Provence does not invite parsley in, though this is understandable, because dried parsley is a dud. Dried parsley is definitely part of parsley’s overall PR problem: Compared to how other, admittedly more potent (you could say pushy) herbs smell and taste when dried, parsley’s like dusty leaf-particles of why-bother. (Check the aroma and taste of dried versus fresh rosemary, then parsley, and you’ll see. Never mind; don’t: You’ll just end up with dried parsley sitting there sadly among your spices until you throw it away.)

Poor unsung parsley didn’t make the cut for James Beard’s six essential herbs in his essential“Beard on Food” from 1974, though he does acknowledge its ubiquity in an offhand, backhanded way: “Parsley too, of course, but that is so universal it goes without saying.” But it needs saying. The goddesses of cooking, Julia Child and Marcella Hazan, likewise, recommend its use everywhere, yet do not deign to discuss it, as far as I can find (and Hazan, especially, has unminced words on everything).

The handful of chopped parsley that’s supposed to

Tribune News Service ■ Parsley, the underrated, underappreciated herb, can be so much more than a garnish. In fact, it tastes great on or in almost everything.