Question
Katherine Collard
Is it okay to freeze fresh herbs from the garden and if so how long do you recommend keeping them?
Answer
So fresh herbs can certainly be frozen, and whether they're from the garden or anywhere else, right? And there's different ways to do this. You can just take the herbs themselves. I recommend at least rinsing them off of any loose debris that you don't want in your cooking in the future, and then dry them off at least a little bit, whether it's on a towel or if you have a salad spinner, you can put them in there and just draw out excess moisture. You can freeze the herbs just as they are on the stems. That's one way to do it. Keep in mind that as you thaw that item, you'll need to deal with it at that point, okay? Or not. Okay? So it depends on how you want to use the product. But if your intent is to remove cleanly the leaves from the stems in the future, then it would be best to remove the leaves from the stems before you freeze them. Okay? But in some contexts, at least the way that I cook, I just throw everything into the pot and let it simmer, stems and all. And then either I fish out the stems later on, or the members of my family can do that while we're eating, which is something that we're used to in the context of the type of cooking that we do, whether it's Indian cooking where you see a lot of that, or just a more rustic approach to cooking where I want to get the flavor from the stems and also some of the subtle different flavors that may accompany the stems when compared to the leaves, which I also use. Okay? So you can, again, remove the leaves, and then package them in a bag or a container of some sort, ideally airtight, and that's going to go in the freezer. Another approach is to puree, or to break down to some degree, the leaves, and then you can store that, and you can portion size it into-- there's usually a lot of moisture at that point associated with a pureed or a finer chopped bunch of herbs. You can then portion those out in an ice cube tray, freeze them, and then pop them out, and then store them in a container like a big Ziploc bag in your freezer, so that you can easily grab one portion of whatever it is, and then just quickly and easily add that to whatever preparation that you're going to continue with. Okay? It's also possible if you want to add a little bit of liquid to that so that it freezes easier. I don't recommend adding a lot of liquid necessarily, unless you know that's going to go into some sort of a soup or a stew or a simmering pot where a little bit of extra water would not be of issue. Okay? But those are a few ways to handle fresh herbs. Those are a few ways that I handle fresh herbs, depending on the context and my approach to the end use or the application of that product. Okay? I hope you'll give it a try and see what works best for you. Thank you.
