Dill

Two parts of the same plant

Dill is essentially two ingredients from one plant:

• Dill weed — the feathery green leaves, used fresh or dried
• Dill seed — the dried mature seeds, more pungent, used whole or ground

The two have different flavor profiles: dill weed is fresh, grassy, slightly anise-floral. Dill seed is more bitter, caraway-adjacent, with deeper warm spice notes.

Most cooking traditions use one or the other based on dish — dill weed for fresh fish and salads, dill seed for pickling and breads.

Scandinavian and Russian essential

In Scandinavian cuisine — especially Swedish, Finnish, and Danish — fresh dill is inseparable from cured fish. Gravlax (cured salmon) traditionally uses thick layers of fresh dill in the cure; pickled herring is finished with dill; new potatoes are tossed with butter, salt, and dill.

In Russian and Polish cuisine, dill appears in almost every meal during summer — sprinkled on borscht, mixed into cottage cheese, pressed into compound butter, layered into pickles. Russian dill consumption per capita is among the highest in the world.

Pickle dill vs fresh dill

The classic American “dill pickle” relies on dill seeds and dill heads (the umbrella-like flower clusters with developing seeds) — added whole to brine.

The seeds and flower heads provide stronger, more pungent flavor than fresh leaves, which would lose their character during the long pickling fermentation. Hardcore picklers grow their own dill specifically to harvest the seed heads at the right moment.

Greek and Indian uses

In Greek cuisine, dill is used in:

• Tzatziki (yogurt-cucumber sauce)
• Spanakopita (sometimes)
• Avgolemono soup (some versions)
• Stuffed grape leaves

In Indian cuisine, especially Maharashtra and Gujarat, dill (called suva or shepu) appears in:

• Suvachi bhaji (sautéed dill greens)
• Dal-shepu (lentils with dill)
• Raita (yogurt-dill side)

The Indian dill is sometimes a slightly different species (Anethum sowa) but used similarly.

A summer herb

Dill is a cool-season annual that’s notoriously hard to keep going through summer heat — most plants bolt to flower and seed quickly when temperatures rise.

This is why dill’s culinary heyday is early summer through fall — during the brief window when the plant is producing abundant feathery leaves before flowering. After flowering, the leaves diminish but the seeds become available for picking.

Successive plantings every 2-3 weeks help maintain a steady supply, but most home gardeners simply accept dill as a spring vegetable that bolts to seed by midsummer.