Say that it’s the end of summer and you have unwisely planted roughly 30 green basil plants and 30 purple basil plants in your garden.  Now some of them didn’t make it because of transplant shock, the drought, or they got eaten by voles, slugs, or Japanese beetles, but that’s still a crap ton of basil. And say you didn’t make it any better by pinching diligently this year so that some of the plants are two to three feet high. What do you do? You don’t want to waste this basil. The basil I froze last year in oil turned dark and icky looking. So I went poking about the internet and found this post about preserving your basil and how to keep it green, including making pesto to freeze. I thought I could make pesto and freeze it, but then it’s pesto forever, and given my propensity for developing new allergies, I figured two ingredients in the freezer is safer. Then later on I can add garlic or cashew nuts when I’m ready to use it.  Or I can use in it applications where you just want some basil, but not necessarily pesto. So basically what I’ve made is a basil and olive oil paste that will store in the freezer easily and not turn black and icky looking.

Yeah, this isn’t necessarily a normal recipe for us, but I’m pressed for time with harvest stuff, and some of you might be wanting to save a bit of summer for later if you’ve got an overabundance of basil in your garden or if you see some at a farmer’s market. I’ve got a step by step recipe card below, but here’s the photo play by play first.

Frozen Pesto Starter

Print Recipe

Frozen fresh basil and olive oil paste to preserve the flavors of summer

• CourseIngredient/Staple

Frozen Pesto Starter Print Recipe Frozen fresh basil and olive oil paste to preserve the flavors of summer CourseIngredient/Staple

Ingredients

• fresh basil (you need enough that the leaves will blend in the blender)
• olive oil (just enough to blend with the basil to form a paste)

Servings:

Instructions

1. Rinse fresh basil and trim off any discolored leaves. Make sure remaining stems will fit the diameter of your pot.
2. Place enough water in a pot, so that the water is three inches deep. Bring water to a boil.
3. In another container, bowl or pot, add cold water and plenty of ice, making sure you can fit the stems of the basil it in submerged.
4. Using tongs, place the basil in your boil water making sure it gets submerged until the leaves wilt. You will likely need to do this in batches. Using tongs, remove the basil and plunge it into the ice water until it has cooled. Take basil out of the ice water and set aside.
5. Strip leaves off the stems and add the leaves to the blender. Add enough oil to make a paste and blend.
6. Place paste in ice cube trays or in quart zip top freezer bags. Only fill the zip top bags half full so that you can spread the paste out to freeze in a thin, flat sheet so you can break off what you need without thawing the whole thing.

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Well, I’m a bit overwhelmed with other projects in real life right now and the recipe I wanted to make for you guys is not really going well. It needs at least two more attempts before I get it to a place that’s blog worthy. But fear not, there will be a post.

Regular readers and my friends in real life are aware of my spice addiction. My collection has 186 entries on my google docs inventory spreadsheet and is housed by a bookshelf, a spice cabinet that’s 12″x12″x48″, and half an armoire style cabinet. One of the problems I encountered when the corn allergy hit was that many of my spice blends were no longer safe due to anti-caking agents and actual ingredients (citric acid) on the label, or that many of them I didn’t tolerate well anymore due to cross contamination issues. I do very well with Penzey’s or Frontier single spices, but blends can be an issue.  So I recreate my favorite blends. You may remember a prior post I did on spices DIY Spice Mix Day – Montreal Steak, Creamy Peppercorn, Singapore, and Full of Flavor Herb Mix.  Since I thought it might be helpful for other people, I decided to share three more of my mixtures that I use constantly.

Greek seasoning is something I use almost daily. I put it in vinaigrette salad dressings, I toss vegetables with it and some olive oil and roast them, and I use it on steamed vegetables with a bit of olive oil instead of butter (I have a dairy allergy and I only use my homemade margarine for special occasions as it’s a pain to make). I keep a shaker on the table at home and one at work for lunches there. I make a pint jar of this at a time, but this recipe is a little less than cup and it’s easy to cut in half if you just want to try it.

Prime Rib Seasoning is a blend that I use primarily for beef roasts. It’s unbelievable as a rub on prime rib roasts or other beef oven roasts, great to season stew beef before searing it and to season the beef stew itself, and I also use it to season pot roasts before searing and braising in the oven.

Italian Seasoning is a blend that was always in your spice cabinet if you grew up where I did. It got added to all manner of crock pot creations, soups, stews, and tomato sauces. It was an easy way of adding basic seasonings, such as oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, marjoram and sage, without actually having to buy all those seasonings. Since my husband does a lot of crock pot recipes, and since I still use Italian seasoning as a crutch at times, even though I have all that stuff in my spice cabinet, and since I’m concerning about cross contamination in blends, I mix up my own now. This recipe makes about a cup, but we make a quart at a time because we do fly through it pretty quickly. A quart might last us three months.

Go out and season your food! Let us know if there are blends you are missing that you’d like us to try to create/recreate for you.