Cooking With Dill: Timing, Dishes and Storage

With dill, the first question is which part you’re holding. The feathery leaves, often sold as dill weed, lose their smell to heat, so they go in a minute or two before the end of cooking. The small dried fruits sold as dill seed are sturdier and can go in for the last 20 minutes.¹ In India, they’re fried briefly in hot fat and stirred into dals. Nearly every choice about cooking with dill comes back to that split.

At a glance

Question	Dill leaves (weed)	Dill seed
When to add	A minute or two before the end of cooking¹	Up to the last 20 minutes¹
How to bring out flavor	Add raw or at the last minute	Fry briefly in hot fat, as in Indian cooking
Classic uses	Fish and shellfish, boiled potatoes, cucumbers, soups, sauces	Pickles, breads and pastries, Indian dals
Fresh vs dried	Fresh is much more aromatic	Sold dried
Fridge life	About two days, per Purdue²	Not applicable

Dill leaves: add them late

The leaf is the fragile part. LSU AgCenter puts dill leaves with the delicate herbs (basil, chives, cilantro, parsley and mint) and says to add them a minute or two before the end of cooking, because long heat costs flavor and aroma.¹ America’s Test Kitchen’s herb guide files dill under delicate herbs to add at the last minute.³ ATK also explains why: delicate herbs tend to have more volatile flavor compounds.⁴

So in a soup, stew or sauce, stir chopped dill in as the pot comes off the heat. You’ll often see “five minutes before the end”; the extension figure is shorter. In cold dishes like salads, dressings and dips, there’s no heat to worry about.

Prep

Chop close to serving. ATK says to gather the leaves into a tight pile under your guiding hand instead of running the knife over a loose pile.³ Chop just before you use it, as with any delicate herb.
Use the tender parts. The leaves, small stems and immature flower umbels are all used, fresh or dried. We found no source on cooking the thicker lower stems.
Wash, then dry well. ATK’s advice for delicate herbs is to dry them thoroughly after rinsing, for example in a salad spinner lined with paper towels. It also says the leaves shouldn’t sit in liquid, which encourages rot.³ We’d take that to mean rinse just before you use it, not before you store it, so the water stays out of the fridge. No source says that directly.

Dill seed: cook it

The fruits carry more oil than the leaves,⁵ and the seed tastes a bit like caraway.

LSU says dill seeds can go in for about the last 20 minutes of cooking.¹ In India, where Katzer notes the dried fruits get used rather than the leaves, they’re fried briefly in hot fat to bring out their aroma and go into dals. In Gujarat they also turn up in quickly fried vegetables.⁶

What to cook with dill

Use	Part	Where	Source
Fish and shellfish, flavored directly with dill	Leaves preferred	Scandinavia, where Katzer calls it a kind of national spice	Katzer⁶
Fish soups and stews	Leaves	Germany	Katzer⁶
Chopped over boiled potatoes and other foods	Leaves	Baltic states	Katzer⁶
Cucumbers, bread, vegetables, pickles	Not specified	Europe generally	Katzer⁶
Pickled cucumbers, onions, flavored vinegar	Flower heads and ripe seed	Russia and northeastern Europe, among others	PROSEA,⁵ Katzer⁶
Soups, salads, sauces, sandwich fillings	Leaves	General	Britannica,⁷ PROSEA⁵
Pastries and bread	Seed	General	PROSEA⁵
Bean dishes; rice with fava beans	Not specified	Iran	Katzer⁶
Chopped over spicy dishes; dried in spice blends	Leaves	Georgia	Katzer⁶
Dals and quickly fried vegetables	Seed, fried in fat	India	Katzer⁶

Dill is especially popular in eastern European and Scandinavian cooking.

Dill pickles

For home-canned pickles, use a tested recipe and follow it exactly. The National Center for Home Food Preservation says not to change the proportions of vinegar, food or water.⁸ Its quick fresh-pack dill pickle recipe uses about 14 heads of fresh dill, 1½ heads per pint jar, or 4½ tablespoons of dill seed, 1½ teaspoons per pint.⁹ Those flower heads aren’t the same thing as the chopped leaves in a clamshell.

Fresh, frozen or dried

Fresh is the benchmark. Katzer calls fresh dill much more aromatic than dried,⁶ and when ATK tested dried herbs in place of fresh, tasters preferred fresh in all but one dish.⁴

Dried dill loses much of what makes dill smell like dill. A 1985 study found severe losses of the main aroma compounds in drying, and freeze-dried dill kept about a quarter of the total.¹⁰

Ratio (Attributed): If you substitute, the extension rule is about 1 part dried to 3 parts fresh:

Source	Fresh	Dried
LSU AgCenter¹	1 tablespoon	1 teaspoon
NDSU Extension¹¹	1 tablespoon	1 teaspoon
University of Delaware¹²	2 to 3 teaspoons	¾ to 1 teaspoon
America’s Test Kitchen⁴	3 parts	1 part

Those are general herb rules, not measured on dill. Delaware also suggests crushing dried herbs first to release some of their oils.¹²

Frozen dill works in cooked dishes. Penn State Extension lists dill among herbs that freeze well, says you can use frozen herbs in the same proportion as fresh, and says not to thaw them before they go into a cooked dish.¹³

Keeping fresh dill

Method	What the source says
Fridge, in damp paper towels	ATK: wrap in slightly damp paper towels, place in an open zipper-lock bag, refrigerate.³ Purdue: about two days.²
Stems in a glass of water	Purdue lists this too, with the same short life.²
Freezer	Purdue: chopped or whole, in a freezer-proof container.² Penn State: chopped in ice cube trays with water, or spread on a sheet and frozen.¹³
Dehydrator	Oregon State: preheat to 95 to 115°F; high temperatures cause flavor loss.¹⁴
Air-drying	Oregon State: small bunches in a vented paper bag, or on paper towels for 5 to 10 days.¹⁴

Dill in oil: a safety note

If you make dill oil or freeze dill in oil, know this: herbs stored in oil create the low-oxygen conditions where botulism toxin can form.¹⁵¹⁶ Oregon State Extension says to refrigerate homemade herb oils and use them within 4 days, or freeze them.¹⁵ Penn State says to add oil to herbs only if you’re freezing them, and never to store herbs in oil at room temperature.¹³ For more, see how to store dill.

Not yet measured

How many minutes of simmering dill leaves can take before the loss is noticeable.
How much aroma dill seed gains from frying in fat.
Whether a dull knife darkens dill faster. A common claim says so; we found no tested source.

Flavorful Herbs, LSU AgCenter. lsuagcenter.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
FoodLink: Dill, Purdue University Extension. extension.purdue.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Liz Bomze, “Our Guide to Fresh Herbs”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2019. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Science: Substituting Dried Herbs for Fresh, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³
Anethum graveolens, Plant Resources of South-East Asia (PROSEA), via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Dill, Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages. gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
“Dill”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2026. britannica.com · Reference work ↩
General Information on Pickling, National Center for Home Food Preservation. nchfp.uga.edu · Reference work ↩
Quick Fresh-Pack Dill Pickles, National Center for Home Food Preservation. nchfp.uga.edu · Reference work ↩
Huopalahti, “Effect of hot air and freeze drying on the volatile compounds of dill herb”, 1985. journal.fi · Peer-reviewed ↩
Julie Garden-Robinson, “Ingredient Substitutions” (FN198), NDSU Extension, 2018. ksre.ksu.edu · Reference work ↩
“Using Herbs and Spices”, University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, 2025. udel.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Martha Zepp, “Freezing Herbs”, Penn State Extension, 2025. extension.psu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³
Nellie Oehler, “Drying herbs”, Oregon State University Extension Service, 2025. extension.oregonstate.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Carolyn Raab and Margy Woodburn, “Herbs and Vegetables in Oil” (SP 50-701), Oregon State University Extension Service, 2025. extension.oregonstate.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²
Nummer, Schaffner, Fraser and Andress, “Current Food Safety Issues of Home-prepared Vegetables and Herbs Stored in Oil”, Food Protection Trends, 2011. foodprotection.org · Peer-reviewed ↩

Cooking With Dill: When to Add It, What to Pair It With, How to Keep It