Freezing basil for when it's freezing.

As I tink away at the keyboard I can smell the aroma of pasta sauce simmering for a few hours now. It’s January so the fresh ingredients are not always readily available. Lori and I usually try to have a basil plant growing in the house. This winter that didn’t happen, not yet anyway. And probably won’t since we have a trip planned to the “land of pasta, wine and tomatoes” (Italy) in less than three weeks. Not a good time to start a new plant.

Two years ago, I had mucho sweet basil plants in my garden and in planters. We love fresh herbs. I wanted to see if I could find a way to harvest and save the basil for future use. Internet searches brought a different results. I didn’t want a dried method. There seemed a schism on two methods of freezing. Put leaves in water and freeze or put them in olive oil. Some sites said olive oil would turn rancid. There were a lot of sites that swore by the oil method of freezing. I decided to try both.

Here’s what I did. I chopped the leaves in an electric chopper. You could use a mixer, cuisinart or whatever is handy for you. I put half the mixture in a water base, the other half in an olive oil base. We then put the mixtures in small muffin tins and ice cube trays. This gave us different size frozen basil globs. The basil easily popped right out of the tins and trays. Next I wrapped each green basil bunch in saran wrap. The saran wrapped groups were then put in two large freezer bags to distinguish the water from the oil version.

I have tried both versions and find no remarkable difference between the two. But the fruits of our toils are handy and marvelous, even two years later. Especially on a 20 degree New England day.