Frozen Herbs and Citrus

Few more freezer ideas for everyone!

Recently a few tips were shared with me, that I wanted to share with all of you. Thanks to my friend Linda (who once owned a restaurant and has a bunch of helpful tips like these. Lucky for me I can pick her brain – lucky for you, I can share them, here, with you!).  I am not sure about you, but it seems whenever I go to the fridge in need of chopped off up parsley to finish off my dish or when I need the zest of a lemon for my salad dressing I find wilted herbs and moldy lemons.  While I was helping Linda to organize her culinary life on the computer, I was mentioning some of the new ideas I had for my blog. She shared some great ideas with me for herbs and citrus. Most herbs freeze well for purposes of using them in cooking. Parsley will wilted upon thawing, but if you chop the parsley and then freeze it, it is ready to be added to soups, pastas, casseroles or whatever else directly out of the freezer. The flavor remains unchanged and parsley keeps its bright green color.

So for all of you who did not know this wonderful tip – Thank Linda!

I am sure this will work with other herbs, but I haven’t tried any to test the color and flavor – let me know what your experience has been!

Freezing citrus zest and juice is another tip. First zest the citrus (lemons and limes are what I use most)  and separate your zest so you have one type in its own bag, label the bags and freeze.

Now juice the lemons and limes and put the juice in ice cube trays to freeze. Once the juice is frozen you can put them all in one big bag and pull out cubes as you need them. 1 cube = about a Tablespoon of juice! Conveniently premeasured too!

Those are a few quick tips for you…remember to label and date items you put in the freezer!

One last thing, a useful tip for keeping organized, I like to keep a list by the freezer with a list of the items in my freezer. This way I am reminded of all the great things I put in there so things do not go to waste. This is also my quick reference to what’s for dinner!