Bunches of Basil and how to save it!

I pulse the food processor with one hand and drizzle olive oil into the feed tube with the other hand, just pulsing until the basil is coarsely chopped. You should make sure that all the basil is coated with oil too, which keeps it from going dark in the freezer. I use about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil for each batch in the food processor when I'm making coarsely chopped basil like this to use for pasta sauce, soup, or stew during the winter. When I'm making basil puree ( as in a basil vinaigrette) I use more oil and chop the basil much more finely.
A while ago Helen from Beyond Salmon wrote an excellent post on preserving and using herbs in which she explained this quite well. Basically soft herbs are things like basil, cilantro, parsley, oregano, and mint which are either eaten raw or added only for a few minutes of cooking. Hard herbs are things like rosemary, thyme, savory, and sage which are suitable for long cooking times. The two things from this list that I've had great luck freezing are rosemary and thyme. I actually discovered how to do this somewhat by accident when I cut the branches off my rosemary and thyme bushes one fall and didn't have time to pick the leaves off. I washed the herbs, then put the stems into a ziploc bag and put it in the freezer, not sure what would happen.

Use a separate ziploc bag for the rosemary and thyme.
Let thyme and rosemary stay in the freezer for several weeks.

After a few weeks, take ziploc bag out of the freezer and use a rolling pin to roll over the bag containing the herbs. You should see a significant amount of leaves come loose from the stems. If some leaves don't come off, you can remove the loose leaves and freeze the others a bit longer, or pick the rest off by hand.

The frozen leaves fall off the stems, and they are nearly as good as fresh. Try this if you have rosemary and thyme in your garden and live where there's a cold winter, and I think you'll like the result.
After I've separated the leaves from the stems, I like to store my
frozen herbs in canning jars which have a lid that seals well.
This keeps moisture away from the herbs.
(The jars go back in the freezer.)

That's how easy it is to preserve the rosemary and thyme from your garden to use in wonderful soups and stews all winter long. Use the frozen leaves in any recipe calling for fresh rosemary or thyme. For recipes created using dried thyme or rosemary, use about twice as much of the frozen herbs as you would the dried version.


Or, you can just go to Trader Joe's and look for this, which is cilantro- BUT they also have basil!