Rosemary Uses: Lamb, Potatoes, Bread, Skewers, Desserts and Beyond the Kitchen

Rosemary tastes pungent and slightly bitter, and America’s Test Kitchen counts it among the hearty herbs you add early in cooking,¹ so it’s happier in roasts, breads and stews than in raw dishes. Push it into a leg of lamb with garlic, press little tufts into focaccia, or use the woody sprigs themselves as skewers. It even goes into a lemon pound cake. One caution: homemade rosemary oil has to be refrigerated and used within 4 days, or frozen. For timing, prep and amounts, see cooking with rosemary.

At a glance

Meat

Lamb. Saveur’s Roman leg of lamb gets stuffed all over with lots of sliced garlic and fresh rosemary before it roasts.² See spices for lamb.

Marinades and rubs for grilled meat. America’s Test Kitchen treats rosemary as a hearty herb to add early, noting that hearty herbs’ volatile flavor compounds are somewhat more heat-stable than those of delicate ones.¹ So rosemary can go into a marinade or rub from the start, where a delicate herb would fade. It’s a natural with lemon and olive oil on chicken.

Beef and pork. Rosemary goes with meats in general. We didn’t find a named recipe that puts rosemary on roast beef specifically, though it’s a familiar pairing.

Skewers. The sprigs can be the skewer. In a Bon Appétit grilling recipe republished by Food Republic, sturdy fresh sprigs hold scallops: trim them to about 6 inches and whittle the thicker ends to a point.⁷

Potatoes, vegetables and soup

• Potatoes. The University of Illinois Extension’s herb potato soup uses 1/2 teaspoon of crumbled dried rosemary with 1 teaspoon of dried thyme, toasted in a dry skillet until fragrant.⁵ Taste of Home’s roasted sweet potatoes use 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary, crushed.⁶ See baked potato spices and sweet potato spices.
• Paella. The Valencian recipe from Visit València adds a sprig of rosemary and lets it cook for about 5 minutes.⁴ See paella spices.
• Soups and vegetables. Both are standard rosemary uses. See potato soup spices.

Bread and baking

Focaccia. In Andrew Janjigian’s focaccia for America’s Test Kitchen, you pick a bunch of rosemary into small tufts of 3 to 5 needles and press them deep into the dough at 1-inch intervals, which keeps them from burning in the oven.³ The same idea works for crackers or flatbreads topped with rosemary.

Sweet baking. Rosemary works in sweets too. Emeril Lagasse’s lemon rosemary pound cake folds 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh rosemary into the batter with lemon zest and lemon extract.⁸ It also turns up in sorbets and other citrus sweets, but we didn’t open a named recipe for those.

Blends and stuffing

Rosemary is a background note in several classic dried blends:

See poultry seasoning, good stuffing spices, Thanksgiving herbs and spices and herbes de Provence.

Drinks

Beverages and herbal teas are among rosemary’s uses. You can steep a sprig in hot water, or in a sugar syrup for lemonade or cocktails. We found no tested recipe to cite.

Rosemary oil, vinegar and butter

Infused oil. Rosemary oil is one of its uses. Made at home, it carries a real risk. Oregon State University Extension explains 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.¹² Use it for marinades, dressings and dipping inside that window.

Vinegar. Colorado State University Extension lists rosemary among the fresh herbs for flavored vinegar, at 3 to 4 sprigs per pint, and gives the flavor at least 10 days to develop. The vinegar keeps up to six to eight months in the refrigerator.¹³

Compound butter. Butter mashed with chopped rosemary seasons steak, fish, potatoes or pasta in one easy step.

With cheese

Rosemary goes on pizza, into macaroni and cheese, and alongside cheese boards. We didn’t find a named recipe for any of these.

Beyond the kitchen

• Food preservation. PROSEA notes that the food industry uses rosemary oleoresin as a natural antioxidant.¹⁴ In the European Union, extracts of rosemary are an authorized food additive, E 392, in several food categories.¹⁵

For safety notes on concentrated rosemary products, see the rosemary profile.

Not yet sourced

• A named recipe for rosemary with roast beef, cheese dishes or compound butter.
• A tested rosemary tea or syrup recipe.
• Rosemary sorbet: no named recipe opened.

Related

• Rosemary, cooking with rosemary and too much rosemary
• Dried rosemary vs. fresh, how to store rosemary, can you freeze rosemary? and how to dry rosemary
• Rosemary substitutes, rosemary vs. thyme, rosemary vs. sage, rosemary vs. lavender and tarragon vs. rosemary