Harvesting Your Herbs for Winter Use

Filling Tray with Tarragon

I’ve been hauling the remnants of my herb garden in and out of the house the past week, since it’s been getting down below freezing (or close to) and I still had some harvest-able fresh herbs. I saw this great idea on Pinterest on how you can harvest, freeze, and then use your fresh herbs throughout the winter! What a great idea. I really can’t attribute this to any one person, as I guess it’s a method that has been done for years but I obviously never paid attention since I had never had an herb garden before this year. You can read about my herb garden here: Planter Pot Fresh Herb Garden

The method is simple. Clip all your fresh herbs with scissors, strip the stems of their leaves, then dice small. Fill ice trays (or in my case, I also used one of those egg-holders from my fridge) with a teaspoon to tablespoon of the diced herbs. Pour olive oil into each “cup” until just over the top of the herbs, then freeze. Once frozen, you can empty them into Ziplocs and label them. Next time you want to saute up some veggies for soup or make a sauce, take one (or two or three) of these cute little cubes and throw them in the pan! Now you have the oil AND herbs ready to go!

Tarragon with Oil Ready for Freezer

My herbs haven’t had time to freeze up all the way yet for a photo at the time of this writing, so can’t show them labeled in the bags, but I’m sure you get the gist. If you haven’t harvested your herb garden yet if you have one, now is the time to think of salvaging them for the winter.

I ended up freezing lots of tarragon, a fair amount of basil, and some chives: One egg and one ice tray of tarragon, one ice tray of basil, and a half ice tray of chives.  I didn’t plant near enough cilantro and that’s been long gone, but I’m going to attempt to grow my rosemary bush in the house over the winter. If I see it’s starting to fail, out come the scissors and ice cube trays!