Recipe of the Week: Freeze those Herbs!

I had a bunch of herbs this summer, and loved going to the backyard to retrieve fresh Thai basil for my ginger noodles, rosemary for chicken, basil for Italian dishes...and then came the monsoon-type rains of this fall and night freezes.

I was sad until I was at my friend Laura's house one day and saw that she had bought frozen herbs from a grocery. And then I got to thinking...why not freeze my own herbs?

So I googled and checked on how to go about it (would I need water or chicken/veggie stock, can they all be frozen, should I chop them first, etc. And it turns out...yes.

It doesn't really matter if you chop them or not, use stock or water or wine, etc. So here's what I've done so far:

Collect herbs
Fill ice cube tray about 3/4 of the way up the "cube" with the herb, chopped or whole
Fill up the rest of the cube with stock
Freeze
Place in ziploc bag and LABEL for future use. This will make actually using the herbs in the future easier, since they have a tendency to look similar when they're frozen.
Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.

More of a tip this week than an actual recipe, but it's cheaper than buying fresh herbs all winter. In fact, you can do this with leftover fresh herbs you buy--when's the last time you actually used all that bunch of cilantro?! Continue doing this when you run out of fresh, and you'll have to buy herbs much less frequently!

And then comes summer when you can start all over again! :0)