How To Freeze Fresh Herbs To Prevent Food Waste

Let’s face it – we’ve all been guilty of wasting food at one time or another. Maybe a recipe required a small portion of basil, but the store you went to only sold it in big bunches. Maybe some rosemary was hidden at the back of the cupboard, and you completely forgot about it. Maybe you bought too much in your weekly shop. Though it can happen frequently, we should try not to make a habit of wasting food – not only can it reduce the amount of money you have, but it can also harm our environment. Read on to explore food waste and how you can avoid it!

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Why food waste is a problem

The food waste crisis is an unavoidable problem – and it’s only going to become more concerning if we ignore it. Wasting food is detrimental to our environment since it takes extensive amounts of land, labor, and fresh water to generate the food in the first place. Humans waste around a third of all food out there, meaning this factor is one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide.

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Just consider a simple carton of milk. Think about all the input that went into generating it – the resources and effort injected into raising cows, manufacturing the milk, transporting it to a store, and the customer energy of traveling to the store to purchase it. So, why should we let all this effort go to waste?

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Currently, a considerable amount of wasted food ends up in the dreaded landfill sites, where it exists only to rot and release a harmful greenhouse gas known as methane. If we avoided chucking goods away to landfill sites, we could cut down significant amounts of carbon dioxide emissions.

Freezing herbs in olive oil

Freezing herbs in olive oil is a tried and tested way of preventing food waste. And it gets better – this method is easy to carry out and also allows for maximum taste! Indeed, it’s better to use oil than water in this situation since the oil incorporates the herb taste, thus preserving that much-wanted flavor.

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Requirements

Thankfully, you won’t require too many things in this method. You simply need the herbs you want to freeze, olive oil, a knife, and an ice-cube tray.

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In this process, you must wash and dry the herbs before chopping them up to a size of your preference. You must remove any thick stems attached to the herbs at this stage. Place a teaspoon of herbs in each ice-cube tray segment and drizzle oil over the herbs until they are covered. Note that you aren’t required to fill each part entirely with oil. Finally, place the ice-cube tray in the freezer and wait for the cubes to freeze. Once frozen, you can take the cubes out and store them in a freezer-safe container for around half a year. You might want to label this container for future use.

You can easily use these frozen herbs when it comes to cooking a delicious meal. Place a couple of cubes into your pan or oven dish whilst cooking – what’s great is that you don’t even need to defrost the product. This works really well for things such as stews and sauces – just try to avoid using them as garnishes since the herbs tend to mush once defrosted.

An alternative method

Check out this suggestion if you want an alternative method for freezing your herbs!

Simply remove any stems from your herbs and place the leaves into a Ziploc bag. Ensure you compress the herbs into the bag’s bottom, seal it, and roll the bag up. You can secure the bag with a rubber band or clip before putting it in your freezer. Just remember that rolled herbs must be cut up as required when cooking them in meals.

Key Takeaways

• Individuals can learn many things from this article, including the fact that attention needs to be paid to the food waste crisis. As a global problem and key polluter, food waste is a colossal issue that needs to be appropriately targeted.
• Furthermore, we can learn that different approaches can effectively prevent food waste. By simply freezing your herbs in the right way, you can reduce the food waste problem little by little.
• Finally, every individual has the capacity to modify our world. By thinking carefully about what products you require and how you will preserve them, you can place less of a burden on our ecosystem today.