We are witnessing the flourishing of nature and green spaces in the summer time. Herbs of wonderful fragrances and irresistible flavors are literally lurking from all sides. This is that time of the year when you can finally complete the dishes and salads with chopped fresh, green leaves and you usually do not even think that such plants have a short durance.
During the season, we often tend to enthusiastically use those herbs, but once the season ends, we are back to the “boring” meals. This is a simple way on how you can enjoy the richness of those herbs throughout the cold days.
All you need is the herbs, olive oil, an ice mold, knife and freezer.
Choose spices you want, cut them, and spread into a mold for ice making. Fill approximately 2/3 of each of the slots in the mold with fresh chopped herbs. Add extra virgin olive oil or melted unsalted butter over the herbs.
Put those filled mold in the freezer and you have prepared diced oil (butter) with seasonal herbs. Remove the frozen dices out and arrange them in nylon bags that will indicate the herbs and oil in them.
In this way, you preserve the freshness of herbs and useful ingredients in them that are lost by drying. However, we recommend that this process be carried out only in ‘harder’ herbs such as rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano and parsley for the reason that these plants and cooked while preparing the dish.
However, it is not a good idea to preserve the herbs that are added at the end of preparing the dishes, such as mint, basil, lemon verbena, dill. The reason for that is that the process of freezing modifies the freshness of flavor.