Mint Uses: Lamb Sauce, Tabbouleh, Tea, Cocktails, Desserts and Preserving

In cooking, “mint” usually means one of two plants, and they split the work. Spearmint, the milder one with no menthol,¹ covers most savory food and drinks. Peppermint goes almost entirely into sweets and sweet liqueurs. Between them you get mint sauce for lamb, a tabbouleh with more mint than you’d guess, North African tea, juleps and chocolate desserts, plus a running debate over how to get mint into a mojito. For which mint to buy, when to add it and how to muddle it, see cooking with mint.

At a glance

With meat: lamb sauce, jelly and Greek seasoning

Mint sauce. North Dakota State University (NDSU) Extension calls mint a frequent partner for pork or lamb, and notes that in England roast lamb often comes with mint sauce. Saveur’s recipe, introduced with Megan Wetherall’s description of the sauce as a simple composition of fresh mint, sugar and vinegar, uses 2 1/4 cups of finely chopped leaves. The mint, sugar and salt steep in boiling water, then the vinegar goes in and the sauce rests for an hour.³ Katzer says spearmint is the one to use.

Mint jelly. NDSU Extension publishes a tested mint jelly made from mint juice (1 1/2 cups firmly packed fresh mint steeped in 2 1/4 cups water). It’s processed in a boiling water-bath canner for 5 minutes at elevations up to 1,000 feet, and longer higher up, and makes about 3 or 4 half-pint jars. NDSU suggests serving it with roast lamb or chicken, or spooning it over chocolate or vanilla ice cream.⁴

Greek seasoning. McCormick describes its Culinary Greek seasoning as a blend of oregano, garlic and onion with a touch of mint.¹⁰ See Greek seasoning and gyro spices.

In salads and soups

• Tabbouleh. Tabbouleh is one example of mint in Middle Eastern dishes. Saveur’s version is an herb salad, with 1 1/2 cups of packed mint to 3 cups of parsley, plus tomatoes, and it skips bulgur, a common ingredient.⁵ The mint is raw, and there’s lots of it.
• Green and fruit salads. Salads and fruits are among spearmint’s uses. Watermelon and strawberries are popular pairings.
• Noodle soup. In Vietnam, a mild spearmint- or caraway-scented mint is the favorite with noodle soup.
• Peas and other vegetables. Minted peas often get called a traditional English dish. We didn’t find a source for that, though spearmint’s uses include vegetables in general.

Drinks

Tea. NDSU Extension keeps it simple: add several leaves to boiling water and steep for up to five minutes.⁴ Mint tea is served throughout North Africa, Saveur notes. Its Moroccan version steeps 2 tablespoons of Chinese gunpowder or green tea, a bunch of mint (about 25 sprigs) and sugar in 4 cups of boiling water for 10 minutes.⁶ On health, the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) says very little research has been done on peppermint leaf, and that peppermint tea appears to be safe.¹¹ The digestive evidence it describes is for peppermint oil capsules, not tea, and we’re not claiming mint tea treats anything. See Moroccan mint.

Lemonade. NDSU’s mint lemonade mashes 1/3 cup of mint leaves with 1/4 cup of sugar right in the pitcher, and makes nine 1-cup servings. Mint works in both cold and hot drinks, NDSU notes.⁴

Mint julep. An iced cocktail of bourbon, mint and sugar.

Mojito. Herbalist Susan Belsinger, quoted in Garden & Gun, says the brightness of menthol is what stands up to the rum and lime.⁸ How to get the mint into the drink is disputed:

They agree more than it looks: the Ruhlman method strains the crushed leaves out before the drink is built. Neither is a controlled test.

Desserts

Peppermint goes extremely well with chocolate. A lot of dessert mint actually comes from extract, not leaves. McCormick’s Pure Peppermint Extract lists alcohol, water and oil of peppermint, and McCormick suggests a few drops in hot cocoa, frosting or brownie batter.⁹ Spearmint has a dessert role too: its leaves flavor many foods, particularly sweets. For mint ice cream, chocolate mint and other sweet uses, see chocolate mint and spearmint vs. peppermint.

Preserving mint

• Mint vinegar. Colorado State University Extension lists mint among the fresh herbs for flavored vinegar and gives it at least 10 days to develop flavor. It keeps up to six to eight months in the refrigerator.¹⁴
• Mint in oil. Oregon State University Extension warns that herbs are low-acid foods that can carry Clostridium botulinum, so homemade herb oil has to be refrigerated and used within 4 days, or frozen.¹⁵
• Freezing and keeping fresh. NDSU says fresh mint keeps up to a week in the refrigerator, in a glass of water or wrapped in plastic, and can be frozen in airtight freezer bags.⁴ See how to store mint, can you freeze mint? and how to dry mint.

Mint pesto

You can pound mint with garlic, oil and nuts into a pesto-style sauce, alone or with basil. We didn’t find a named recipe to point you to, and it’s a different sauce from basil pesto alla genovese.

Not yet sourced

• Minted peas as a traditional English dish.
• Mint in tzatziki: we found no recipe meeting our standard that includes it.
• The history of mint sauce as a mask for stale meat.
• A taste test of muddled versus shaken mint.

Related

• Mint, cooking with mint, types of mint and too much mint
• Spearmint, peppermint, Moroccan mint, chocolate mint, apple mint and orange mint
• Mint substitutes, basil vs. mint, oregano vs. mint and lemon balm vs. mint