What to use instead of fresh mint
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Cooling raw aromatic in a drink, salad or yogurt sauce
Menthol triggers the same receptors that read cold, so mint physically makes a drink or a raita taste cooler. The effect survives bruising and dies in a hot pan.
Lemon balmRan out
1:1
Citrusy and softer with no cold hit at all. It bruises and browns fast, so add it at the last second.
Basil, in a drinkRan out
1:1
Sweet and aniseed instead of cooling. A basil smash is a good drink; it is not a mojito and it will not read as one.
ShisoRan out
use 2/3 as much
Cool in a different register with a cumin-ish edge. Works with cucumber and lime, strange in a julep.
Mint tea steeped and cooledRan out
1 bag in 2 tbsp hot water per 6 leaves, cooled before it goes in
Gives the flavour with none of the look or the crunch, and it dilutes the drink slightly.
What doesn't work: Peppermint extract. It is concentrated menthol in alcohol, so the drink tastes of candy cane and toothpaste while the herbal green side of the leaf is entirely absent. Half a drop is already too much.
Dried mint bloomed in hot fat as a savoury seasoning (ash reshteh, mercimek corbasi, kofte)
Drying strips the fresh green top notes and leaves a resinous base closer to oregano. A few seconds in hot butter or oil pulls that into the fat, which then goes over the top of the soup as a finishing oil.
Dried oregano or marjoram, bloomed the same wayRan out
1:1
Similar resinous lift and no cooling at all. The soup reads Greek rather than Persian or Turkish.
Za'atarRan out
1:1
Sumac sourness and sesame come along with it. Good on lentil soup and yogurt, wrong in ash reshteh.
Dried spearmint emptied out of mint tea bagsRan out
1 tsp per 1 tsp dried mint
Usually the identical plant at a lower price. Sift the dust out first or the oil goes muddy.
What doesn't work: Fresh mint fried in the butter in place of dried. It carries too much water, so it steams rather than blooms, goes black and bitter in the hot fat, and the resinous flavour you were after never appears. If fresh is all you have, chop it and add it off the heat.
Dried and fresh mint are doing different jobs and are not interchangeable in either direction. Where a recipe genuinely allows the swap, 1 tsp dried stands in for 1 tbsp fresh.