This is not an ar­ti­cle on which dish­es are best for fresh herbs (we be­lieve fresh herbs be­long in every dish). In­stead, it’s about get­ting the most out of fresh herbs; the key word here is: fresh.

Apart from learn­ing how to keep herbs fresh, longer, we will al­so look at how to keep fresh herbs long-term but still have them re­tain a lot of their ‘fresh’ qual­i­ties.

#1 Rinse the herbs im­me­di­ate­ly

There is con­trary ad­vice cir­cu­lat­ing on the In­ter­net about whether or not to wash your herbs im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter pick­ing or pur­chas­ing. Most seem to ad­vise against it be­cause of the ex­cess wa­ter that re­mains on the herbs lead­ing to spoilage soon af­ter. How­ev­er, the sim­ple so­lu­tion to this is to use a sal­ad spin­ner to get the mois­ture out or to sim­ply al­low your herbs to dry for a few hours while laid out in a sin­gle lay­er on a rack. We do not rec­om­mend at­tempt­ing to pa­per-tow­el dry the herbs as resid­ual wa­ter will still re­main and cause spoilage.

Be­sides the easy fix to wet herbs, there is a sol­id rea­son as to why you should wash them—to rid the herbs of any bac­te­ria, de­bris or dirt. Apart from those be­ing gross to eat, they al­so lead to ear­ly-de­cay­ing of your herbs.

#2 Wrap in damp pa­per tow­el

This method works for tough herbs like chan­don beni, thyme and rose­mary. Sim­ply, sprin­kle a sheet of pa­per tow­el with a few drops of wa­ter, en­sur­ing that the tow­el be­comes damp. Then, use it to wrap the herbs. Place in a plas­tic bag and store in the re­frig­er­a­tor un­til ready to use. This doesn’t on­ly keep the herbs fresh but, it al­so pre­vents it from dry­ing out in the re­frig­er­a­tor (have you ever seen wilt­ed herbs in your fridge draw­er?) and main­tains its bright, fresh flavour and tex­ture.

#3 Trim the stems

This works best for soft­er, more ten­der herbs like pars­ley, cilantro and chives. Trim the stems of the herbs and place in a ma­son jar with about 1 to 2 inch­es of wa­ter. Then, place a plas­tic bag over the herbs, press the air out and seal at the bot­tom. For a reg­u­lar shop­ping plas­tic bag, tie, knot or se­cure with a rub­ber band; for a zipped freez­er bag, par­tial­ly seal it at the bot­tom. Leave the jar in your fridge—away from ex­ces­sive sun­light, oxy­gen and mois­ture (see #4 for more on this). Tear your herb leaves off or re­move the stalks as need­ed. Herbs should stay fresh for up to three weeks.

#4 Avoid ex­cess light, oxy­gen and mois­ture

Each tip ei­ther avoids ex­cess light, oxy­gen and mois­ture. This is be­cause too much of ei­ther el­e­ment can ham­per the fresh­ness of the herb. Too much light will dry out the herb—have you ever seen your herb with yel­low edges? That’s the re­sult of ex­cess bright light. While mois­ture is need­ed, too much can make herbs sog­gy and limp. Ex­cess oxy­gen (like from leav­ing your herbs in a ma­son jar in the fridge with­out cov­er­age from a bag) will turn herbs brown and we can all agree that that is not ap­petis­ing.

#5 Freeze

Freez­ing herbs is a great way to main­tain their colour and some of its fresh­ness. Un­like the dry­ing method, the flavour of the herb is not com­plete­ly changed and thus, some of your ini­tial in­ten­tions for it can still be re­tained. The best way is to chop your herbs and place them in an ice cube tray or zipped freez­er bag. Fill with a neu­tral oil like veg­etable, soy­bean or grape­seed and then freeze. The herbs re­tain most of their flavour and bright­ness even though the tex­ture is com­pro­mised. You can eas­i­ly add a block of frozen herb-oil cubes to soups, cur­ries, stews and vinai­grettes (once prop­er­ly thawed out).