Ed Ranks Herbs

This is Tarragon. Which is, surprisingly, not a Transformer.

These are culinary herbs only, so don't get it twisted.

18. Fennel - This is disgusting licorice nonsense. Don't use the greens. Don't use the bulb. Use none of it. If you find this growing... burn it.

17. Lavender - This is a great and awesome flower for smelling and looking at. Put it in soap. Put it in potpourri. Just hang a sachet of it in your closet to keep moths away. But do you know what lavender sucks in? Food.  Supposedly it's a culinary herb that goes well with fish, pork and chicken. It doesn't.

16. Tarragon - This tastes a little bit like licorice, but not nearly as bad as fennel. Best use it sparingly.

14/15. Lemon Balm / Lemon Verbena - Why bother trying to make something taste a little lemony by adding these green herbs with a subtle lemon flavor? You could instead use, you know, lemon.

13. Rosemary - My mom and my wife both despise rosemary like it's poison. I'm not in love with it or anything myself. But it's okay so long as you don't over-do it. It actually works well with things like pork and lamb.

12. Bay Leaf (Laurel) - Bay leaves provide some awesome and complex flavor to stews and soups. But it's sort of a pain in the ass that you have to fish them out after you put them in a dish. While the leaves give great flavor - they themselves remain tough and inedible, no matter how many hours you cook something for.

11. Marjoram - Marjoram is just fake, wannabe oregano.

10. Savory - Savory is just fake, wannabe thyme.

This pretty much exists only for mojitos

9. Mint - Mint is good. Nothing to write home about. You know what mint tastes like. I don't need to explain this to you. 

8. Sage - This tastes like Thanksgiving. If you don't have sage loaded all over your turkey and stuffing... then you're not doing Thanksgiving right.

7. Chives - Chives are like little baby green onions but without the edible onion bulb part. Just the greens. They're perfectly fine to cut up and put on things like a baked potato. They're super easy to grow, too. No matter how bad a gardener you are, you can probably successfully grow some chives.

6. Thyme - I got a really good chicken dish that calls for fresh thyme and it always comes out good. That's really all I have to say about thyme.

5. Dill - Dill is great. Let's just leave it at that.

4. Basil - Fresh basil is amazing and one of the keys to good Italian dishes (or a bowl of Phở)! But it doesn't hold up as well when dried. Store-bought dried basil tastes like nothing.

3. Oregano - As with basil above, you can't have good Italian food if there isn't some oregano in it. It also holds up better than basil and is perfectly fine and flavorful when dried.

2. Parsley - Ditto with the other two, one of the holy trinity of herbs in Italian cooking and this is the best tasting one. I think I like it better dried than fresh. Is that weird? 

I might have somewhat extreme views on this herb.

1. Cilantro (Coriander, Chinese Parsley) - There are two types of people. The first type of people are the types of people who think cilantro tastes amazing. These people think it enhances dishes of all types (Mexican, Asian, etc). They think a fresh salsa or a Thai curry doesn't taste right without some chopped cilantro. Then there is another type of people who think that cilantro tastes "soapy." These are the inferior human beings whose defective germlines should be wiped from the gene pool to make way for real people who deserve to keep on living and breeding.