An Ingenious Tip for Fresh-Tasting Herbs Year-Round

published Jun 25, 2018
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(Image credit: Rush Jagoe)

While I don’t yet have the space in my life for a full-fledged garden, I have happily maintained a small herb garden on my balcony for years. By this time in the summer, it’s overflowing with so much green that I can hardly manage it all, despite constantly clipping sprigs of basil, rosemary, or parsley for whatever I am cooking.

So I am always on the hunt for ways to trim down my plants and preserve their goodness for the colder months ahead, when things are much less abundant. Turns out what I was looking for all along was herb salt.

Make and Freeze Herb Salt to Preserve Your Summer Abundance

When summer brings its abundance of fresh herbs, my usual go-to is pesto. Yet making an herb salt is easier and arguably more versatile.

How to do it: Dump 1/2 cup of kosher salt into a food processor with a little less than 4 cups of fresh herb leaves. What kind of herbs? Honestly, they all work so just grab what you have on hand, be it parsley, basil, mint, oregano, thyme, or rosemary. You can opt for using just one type or reach for a bit of this and a bit of that to create your own mixed herb blend.

Blitz everything together until it’s finely chopped and combined. Then dump the mixture into a zip-top freezer bag, date it, label it, and toss it into the freezer.

(Image credit: Sheela Fiorenzo)

This herb salt will last for months. When you come back to it, not only will the color still be nice and vibrantly green, but it will also still have that fresh-from-the-garden flavor. That’s because both the salt and the freezer act as preservatives.

The uses for this salt are endless — pretty much anywhere you plan to use salt, you can use herb salt instead. Stir it into soups and stews, sprinkle it over roasted vegetables, use it to season any meat or fish, add a pinch to salads, or simply toss it with popcorn.

Get the recipe: Herb Salt