Preserving Herbs

Now that we've all had some time to digest the information shared about how to plant an herb garden and to plan/plant our own, I thought it might be a good idea to renew our inspiration by sharing some information on how to dry the herbs once they come up. Cooking with fresh herbs is wonderfully tasty, but it can be difficult to keep your herbs going through the cold months. Remember, also, that your herbs will grow more prolifically if you trim them often which means that you'll probably end up harvesting more than you will actually use while they're fresh. In these cases, it's helpful to know how to easily dry and preserve them!

There are a few ways to do this, the easiest of which is to simply take your herbs (this works best with savory herbs like rosemary, basil, oregano, and the like) and fill a standard ice cube tray with the herbs topped off with olive oil and freeze them. Once frozen, remove the cubes from their tray and put into freezer bags. Now you have ready to use cubes of yummy seasonings to use in your cooking any time you need them, fresh from your own garden! Yum!

Here is a link to an article about how to actually dry herbs effectively as well as some recipes for various herbed salts and sugars which are useful for cooking with which I found to be very helpful:

How to Preserve Fresh Herbs

Happy gardening!