How To: Enjoy Your Herbs Year-Round

If you vigilantly tend your herb garden over the summer months, shouldn’t you be able to enjoy the fresh flavors year-round?  While drying or freezing herbs may be the most common method of preservation, why not try something different…say an infused honey or herbed butter? Charles W.G. Smith offers handy and easy-to-accomplish tips, ideas and recipes in his book The Beginner’s Guide to Edible Herbs—so start tasting summertime every month!  (Next February, you’ll be happy you tried.)

 

Preserving Herbs in Sugar:
You can preserve some of the sweeter herbs (lemon verbena and lavender work well) in sugar. The flavors blend and make lovely, subtle companions to use instead of regular sugar in any cold food. Pack fresh herb leaves in granulated white sugar in airtight containers. Stir every day to prevent clumping. After the sugar stays dry and loose, remove the leaves before they become crumbly and use the finished “herb sugar” in iced teas or desserts. (Note: The aromatic oils bake off, so they don’t work well in baked or cooked dishes.)

Herbal Honeys:
Honey makes herbal teas palatable, but it is also good medicine on its own—it is very soothing for sore throats and coughs. It is also an antibacterial and is said to strengthen the immune system.  To make an herbal honey, sterilize the jar by boiling it for 10 minutes or running it through the sterilizing cycle of your dishwasher. Pack it with the herb of your choice. Heat enough honey to fill the jar, bringing the honey to the point where it is steaming but not boiling. Pour over the herb, seal the jar, and let it sit in a sunny window for a few days. Strain out the used herb and put a sprig of fresh herb in the jar with the flavored honey.

Herb Butters:
Many herbs—cilantro and dill, for instance—make delicious herb butters. The simplest way is to soften unsalted butter and combine it with chopped herb and lemon juice. The proportions: 4 parts butter, 2 parts herb, 1/2 part lemon juice. This freezes quite nicely and will give you a touch of the herb flavor whenever you need it.