Fresh herbs!
Growing, harvesting and preserving your own fresh herbs is not as hard as you think. We've been growing basil (sweet and lemon lime) for a couple of years now. We have found an easy way for our family to harvest and preserve this tasty addition to all kinds of recipes.
First, we pick the leaves from the plants. I usually do this step totally outside. I cut off one branch at a time and pick leaves with no spots, tears, bug holes, etc. This cuts down on bringing bugs in the house, or having extra steps back outside to the compost pile for the leftover discards.
Then, rinse and soak the leaves. This is a 2-3 step rinse to get all the bugs off and any other dirt. Basically, rinse until clean.
Layer leaves and drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Using a food processor, I chop the leaves until they are fine.
Spray a mini-muffin tin with non-stick spray and keep filling until you run out of basil (drizzle lemon juice and olive oil with each addition of basil leaves).
I freeze them in the pan overnight. Pop them out and place the basil rounds in a freezer bag.
Now, it's so easy to throw fresh basil into any recipe you desire.
Don't forget to get your kids involved!
They can:
- pick leaves from the basil bushes
- help put basil in the food processor
- drizzle the lemon juice and olive oil
- spoon the basil into the muffin pan
After a couple of times, they should be able to do this easy preservation from start to finish.
