Preserve freshly cut herbs for months

serves:

Often we don’t have access to fresh herbs, and if we do have access to them, we tend to order very little, as they go bad pretty fast. There is however a way to work around this. How it’s done:

1. Rinse and dry your herbs properly, then cut them properly with a very sharp knife. Don’t chop them. 

2. Take a number of ice cube trays, depending upon the quantity of herbs you have cut.

3. Label the trays according to the herbs you are about to store. Label properly, meaning: add date of production and type of herbs

4. Now, add to every ice cube compartment one tablespoon of the freshly cut herbs. Top off with olive oil (for intended cold or warm use) or butter (for intended warm use only).

5. Freeze the trays overnight.

6. Next day: take a plastic container, label it accordingly, and transfer the herbal cubes to the corresponding container. Leave in the freezer. One cube = tablespoon of the required herbs.

7. Repeat this process until all fresh herbs are processed. 

This is an ideal way of growing and preserving your own herbs on board too.

In case you don’t have ice cube trays, use gastronorm trays with baking paper to freeze all herbs at once. Weigh the herbs first, spread them out evenly over the surface of the tray, then, after freezing part them equally. Use simple mathematics to calculate how many cuts are needed to have one tablespoon per square.