Freezing Herbs

Pam and Louis gave me an Aerogarden for Christmas. It has been really fun watching everything grow! The first group that I planted was a variety of herbs. Well since some of my plants were reaching the lightbulbs I decided I needed to trim everything back. I wanted to save the herbs so that I could use them as I cooked. I looked up how to do this and found this great idea to freeze them in ice cube trays so that you can simply pop an herb ice cube into whatever dish you are cooking. Genious!! It was super easy. I froze mint, purple basil, and italian basil. The website (wikihow) recommended freezing the basil in olive oil, not water.


Here's the Aerogarden before I cut the herbs.

The website recommended blanching the herbs (I only did the mint only) to make them last longer...up to 6 months. To blanch them, you dip them in boiling water and then immediately into ice water. I then put the mint into the food processor to chop it up finely.

This is the basil. I added olive oil and chopped away!

Here's the final product. Mint cubes on the right (frozen in water). Purple basil in the middle (in olive oil) and Italian basil on the left (also in olive oil).

Can't wait until the rest of my herbs get a bit bigger and I can freeze some more!