Eli5: Why are bay leaves used whole, when every other spice is chopped or ground up?
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Not every other spice is chopped up or ground. You can use cinnamon whole, mace, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, curry leaves, cardamom…
So you can pull the leaves back out of your dish when it’s done cooking.
Unless it’s ground up fine in an Indian dish, no one really wants to eat bay leaf
As bay leaves heat up, they release different flavor compounds at different temperatures. I think like 13 different very subtle flavors. Make a pot of chicken soup with and another without the bay leaf and you will soon learn why we use them,
And they are not really digestible, like other people have said, so you don’t want them actually IN your soup.
Because you are meant to remove them. They provide great flavour but are nasty af to eat. Most people forget to remove them tho.
Because you typically don’t eat the bay leaf, so it’s left whole to make it easier to remove before serving.
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