Course 9 | The Medicinal Kitchen

Learn how to incorporate healthful and medicinal herbs into your everyday cooking.

Student Level

Length: 2.5 hours

Instructor: Jennifer Brott | Holistic Nutritionist

This course is only available with the following programs:

  • Home Herbalist Online

    Mini-Certificate Program

    view course
  • Community Herbalist Online

    Full Certificate Program

    view course

Meet your course instructor

Jennifer Brott | Holistic Nutritionist

Jennifer is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and founder of Vancouver based nutritional consulting firm, My Edible Advice. Her expertise and private practice are rooted in an unwavering commitment: to empower individuals to reach their health and wellness goals by providing them with the tools to thrive. Fuelled by this conviction, My Edible Advice has sparked an appetite for optimal health and wellness that extends far beyond its Vancouver base. Today, Jennifer and her team provide nutritional consultation, cooking classes, and meal planning sessions to a worldwide set of individual and organizational clients in pursuit of the knowledge to nourish and map to optimal health. Jennifer has developed a keen interest in gastrointestinal, prenatal, and oncology nutrition and her breadth and depth of knowledge in these areas are reflected in her private practice. She uses herbs in every single one of her dietary protocols and is continually amazed by the healing powers in food. A Maritime girl at heart and west coaster in-home, Jennifer seeks solace where the mountains meet the ocean and finds bliss in the bounty and buzz of a local farmer’s markets. She believes that health is happiness, and that to engage, enable, and empower her clients to live their best life is to do the very same for her. Jennifer proves that healthful choices can be as easy as pie.

Course description

Culinary herbs bring more to the table than pleasure alone and have been used traditionally around the world as medicine. This course explores some of the most common culinary herbs, including their energetic and medicinal properties. Guidance is provided for harvesting herbs, storing them, washing them, and various forms of processing – drying, preserving, freezing – for immediate use or long-term storage. Since growing your own herbs is not always an option, this course also provides tips for buying quality herbs. 

Culinary herbs have long served as gentle medicine for conditions from stomach upset and headaches to colic and liver ailments. Dive into dozens of recipes that turn your favourite herbs into safe, effective, and often delicious medicine. Learn about curating herbal spice blends, cooking with infusions and decoctions, crafting your own herbal vinegars and oxymels, delighting your guests with delicious herbal mylks, creating herbal-infused fats and oils, and making soothing herbal honeys.

You will learn about:

  • Fresh Herbs 
  • Dried Herbs 
  • Infusions and Decoctions 
  • Herbal Vinegars and Oxymels
  • Herbal Mylks
  • Herbal-Infused Fats and Oils

Recipes:

  • Calming Spring Pistou
  • Immune Boosting Winter Pesto
  • Cooling Herbal Digestion Salt
  • Anti-inflammatory Warming Spice Blend 
  • Immune Tonifying Soup with Astragalus and Medicinal Mushrooms
  • Red Clover Infused Quinoa 
  • Floral Vinegar
  • Cold and Flu Busting Fire Cider
  • Chai Spiced Coconut Latte
  • Lavender Oat Mylk
  • Rosemary and Thyme-Infused Ghee
  • Schisandra and Cinnamon Almond Butter

Enjoy as your kitchen and food creations take on whole new dimensions of healing energy and vibrancy!

Lesson plan

Section I | Welcome

1. Introduction

2. Course outline

Section II | Fresh herbs

3. Overview of fresh herbs

4. Fresh herb preparation, parts I-III

5. Calming Spring Pistou

6. Immune Building Winter Pesto

Section III | Dried herbs

7. Overview of dried herbs

8. Cooling Herb Blend – Mineral Salt

9. Warming Herb Blend – Traditional Garam Masala

Section IV | Infusions & decoctions

10. Infusion vs. decoction

11. Immune Tonifying Soup

12. Red Clover Quinoa

Section V | Herbal vinegars & oxymels

13. Overview of properties of vinegars & oxymels

14. Herb & Flower Vinegar

15. Fire cider

Section VI | Herbal mylks

16. Herbal mylks

17. Chai Spiced Coconut Latte

18. Lavender Oat Mylk

Section VII | Herbal infused fats & oils

19. Herbal infused fats & oils

20. Rosemary & Thyme Infused Ghee

21. Adaptogen Almond Butter

Section VIII | Conclusion

22. Course review