Food storage
Fresh Herbs: Stop Throwing Half of Them Out
You bought a bunch of parsley for one recipe, and five days later the stems are limp and the leaves are black. Three fixes, each taking two minutes or less.
Supermarkets sell herbs in bunches of at least 1 oz (30 g). Most recipes call for 5 to 10 g. The rest ends up in the back of the crisper drawer, forgotten until it's been forgotten for too long. It's the dumbest and most avoidable waste in everyday cooking.
The "vase" method for herbs with stems
Parsley, cilantro, basil, mint: anything with long stems keeps like cut flowers. Trim 1/2 inch (1 cm) off the bottom of the stems, stand them in a glass of room-temperature water, and cover loosely with a plastic bag or plastic wrap. Parsley and cilantro (which like the cold) go in the refrigerator. Basil (which turns black in the cold) stays at room temperature, out of direct light. Change the water every two days. A bunch of parsley treated this way lasts 10 to 14 days instead of 3 to 5 in a drawer.
Freezing: for everything else
Small-leaved herbs, or ones that are hard to keep fresh (chives, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, sage), freeze very well. Two techniques. First: chop them finely into ice cube trays and cover with olive oil (for oily herbs like thyme and rosemary) or water (for chives). The cubes go straight into the pan or the broth, no thawing needed. Second: whole, thoroughly dry leaves in a freezer bag. Straight from the freezer they crumble easily in your palm, which is handy for dried-style herbs on demand.
Basil is the exception: it doesn't handle direct freezing well because the leaves turn black. Make pesto instead (basil, oil, pine nuts or walnuts, Parmesan, garlic) and freeze it in portions in an ice cube tray. Frozen pesto keeps 6 months and dissolves perfectly into hot pasta.
Infused oil: useful short-term storage
For herbs with a robust flavor (thyme, rosemary, bay, sage), a homemade infused oil lasts 3 to 4 weeks in the refrigerator and flavors almost any dish instantly. Gently warm about 3/4 cup (200 ml) of olive oil to 140°F (60°C), no hotter, or you're cooking the herb instead of infusing it. Add the stems, let it sit for 30 minutes, strain. A warning: oil infused with fresh herbs and not acidified does NOT keep at room temperature. The botulism risk on wet herbs in oil is real. Refrigerator only, and use it within 4 weeks.
Buy smarter to waste less
The real fix is to ask yourself before you buy: do I need the whole bunch? Some stores now sell herbs as frozen paste in tubes. They're less fresh, but there's no waste, and they suit herbs you rarely use. Potted herb plants (parsley, basil, chives) sometimes cost less than a cut bunch and last for weeks if you pick leaves without cutting everything. The math quickly works in their favor.
