How to Freeze Fresh Basil

Frozen basil is a wonderful thing to have in the freezer and this post shares all about How to Freeze Fresh Basil, something I've been doing for years!

 If you don't have enough basil to freeze, here's How to Preserve Fresh Basil on the Countertop.)

If you're a gardener who's growing basil, here are my step-by-step instructions on how you can freeze your basil to use all through the winter.  I do this several times each summer, whenever I have some basil that needs to be harvested. Here's how my basil looked before I trimmed the plants and pulled off the big leaves.

Here's my basil after I trimmed it. Basil will actually produce more leaves if it's vigorously trimmed a few times each year, since everywhere you cut the stem it produces two new stems. Just be sure to keep a few leaves on each stem (remember high school botany, that's where the plant gets food.)

I pinch off all the basil leaves, discard the stems, and wash the leaves very well in a salad spinner. Spin them as dry as you possibly can. If you don't have a salad spinner, just wash your basil leaves in the sink and dry them well with paper towels.

Put a few of handfuls of basil into the food processor, using the steel blade. The food processor bowl should be full, but not tightly packed.

I pulse the food processor with one hand and drizzle olive oil into the feed tube with the other hand, just pulsing until the basil is coarsely chopped. You should make sure that all the basil is coated with oil too, which keeps it from going dark in the freezer. 

I use about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil for each batch in the food processor when I'm making coarsely chopped basil like this to use for pasta sauce, soup, or stew during the winter. 

When I'm making basil puree to add to basil vinaigrette I use more oil and chop the basil much more finely.

I have two sizes of these little plastic containers with tight lids that I use to freeze the basil. It doesn't matter what size container you use, but a good trick is to measure the containers before you first use them. That way, when you pull one out of the freezer for a recipe, you'll know how much it is.

Another way of freezing the chopped basil is in a quart-size plastic bag, smashing the basil down flat and pressing all the air out of the bag. This is easy to fit into a crowded freezer, and when it's time to use some basil you can just break off a piece and put the rest back into the freezer.

Source:  Kalyn's Kitchen