How to Keep Herbal Oils Green and Flavorful

Today I want to share with you how to keep fresh herbal oils always green and flavorful. Infusing the flavor of fresh herbs into olive oil makes for a delightful combination that then can be used to flavor fish, chicken, beef, vegetables. It really becomes a wonderful addition to your pantry to boost the flavor and change up the flavor of your various dishes.

But I want to share some tips with you today on how to make these herbal oils so that they stay green and flavorful.

Herbs contain enzymes, and these enzymes cause herbs over time to discolor. And if they discolor in your olive oil, the olive oil will also discolor and it’ll look unappetizing. But that discoloration also creates a bigger problem, it causes the olive oil to develop an off flavor. But I’m going to show you how to deactivate those enzymes so that when you blend them with your olive oil, it’s going to have a lovely color and it’s going to stay that way in your pantry. And that lovely color is going to impart a delicious flavor to whatever foods you use the oil in.

First, I want to go over what types of herbs are best to use when making fresh herbal oils.

Herbs like tarragon are wonderful. Chives are really great. Basil, of course, is absolutely delicious. But you can also use flat leaf Italian parsley, you can use the curly variety of parsley, you can use mint, you can use cilantro, you can use dill.

All of these herbs make wonderful fresh herbal oils. Now, your herbs that have the woody stems like thyme and rosemary, can make for a very overpowering flavor, so I generally don’t recommend using those to make a culinary fresh herbal oil. Now you can use these herbs individually or you can mix and match to develop flavors that you like. Today what we’ll do is go ahead and make a fresh basil oil. In order to deactivate the enzymes in this basil, we need to blanch it in boiling water for about 60 seconds.

You’ll need a sauce pan, just something large enough that you can push your herbs down into, and you’ll want to fill it about three quarters of the way through with water. And then go ahead and turn this onto high, turn your burner onto high to bring this up to a rolling boil. Now, while we’re waiting for that water to come up to a boil, you want to go ahead and get a nice big bowl, fill it with some ice cubes, and then add in some water enough that’ll be sufficient to cover your herbs. And you can certainly cut your herbs into whatever size is easy for you to fit into your sauce pan once the water comes up to a boil. Now, how much herbs do you need in order to make this herbal oil?

Well, for the amount of fresh herbal oil that we’re going to make, you want enough herbs that if you squashed them all up real tight, they would fit into about a one cup measure. Now, I want to mention, you do not need to discard these basil stems.

They’re going to go right into the boiling water and get blanched along with the leaves. The only thing that you want to do is look over the stems, and if there are any little brown bits on the end, you want to just remove that. And also look over your herbs and make sure that all of the leaves look in really good condition.

If you find any that have a brown spot on them, all you need to do is just set that aside.

We’re not going to blanch that because we want all of the herbs to be in a very good pristine condition in order to make the best olive oil, the best fresh herbal olive oil. My water has come up to a boil. So now I’m just going to go ahead and start dumping in all my herbs, all of my basil, and I’m going to set my timer for 60 seconds. I let this blanch for 60 seconds, and now all I’m going to do is use my spider strainer to get this into the cold water to stop the blanching process.

Now, I’m just going to let the basil sit in its ice water bath for a minute or two just until I feel it’s cooled completely. Now, don’t discard this water. This is nicely flavored with basil. So you can use this as a base for making a soup, especially one that may have tomatoes in it, even a base for just a plain old tomato soup. I think you’ll find that it’s quite delightful.

Alternatively, you can let it cool and then you can use it to water your plants because it’s got some nutrients in it. As the basil’s cooling, I just want to mention that you can certainly buy fresh herbs at your local grocery store, but they’re also very easy to grow and really under any circumstances, even if all you have is a window sill garden. And I have a number of videos where I share with you the herbs that I like to grow and keep on hand for both culinary purposes, but also medicinal purposes. And I’ve curated all of those videos in a playlist for you, and I’ll be sure to put that link in the description below. I also just want to mention quickly because I get a lot of questions about this cooktop, this little portable cooktop, it’s a Cuisinart Countertop Burner, and I’ll be sure to put a link to it in the description below.

Once your herbs have cooled, all you need to do is lay them out onto some clean dish towels. And what I’ve got are just flower sack towels. They have a pattern in them, but they’re just plain old flower sack towels, and that’s the type of towel that you want to use as opposed to a terrycloth towel because you want something that is lint-free. So if you have flower sack towels that you use when you’re straining your bone broth, those will work perfectly. And if you’ve been with me a while, you know I really like flower sack towels.

Most of the ones I have are plain, but these just happen to have a little pattern on them, but they’re perfect for drying herbs. So just spread your herbs out across your towel, then get another towel and use this second towel to really start giving them a good drying. We want the herbs to be very dry. You could even put them in a salad spinner if you have one, and spin them around a couple of times, that works great too. And then lay them out onto some flower sack towels and give them a second drying.

What you want to keep doing is, even if you need to change out your towels, you want to keep pressing on your herbs, in this case, the basil, until they feel quite dry.

And as you’re pressing, you’re also going to be pressing the stems, and they’ve also been blanched, so they’re softened. And as you’re pressing down on them, they’ll release any liquid that they may have been retaining. And so, just keep pressing and drying until when you pick them up, everything feels quite dry. Now that we’ve blanched our herbs, cooled them and dried them, we’re ready to move on to the next step where we actually make our fresh olive oil.

I just wanted to pop in for a second in case you’re new here and we’re meeting for the first time. I’m Mary from MarysNest.com and author of the “Modern Pioneer Cookbook”, and I want to welcome you to my kitchen. I’m so glad that you’re here. Now, all we’re going to do is take our basil and drop it down into a blender.

Any type of blender will work for this. Now to the basil, I’m going to go ahead and add one cup of olive oil. Now all we’re going to do is whirl the basil and the olive oil together for about one minute.

Now, I’m just going to stop this about 30 seconds through and push down some of these herbs, some of this basil that has come up the sides of the blender. Next, what you want to do is get a mesh strainer or a colander and place it over a bowl, or in this case, I have a large measuring cup, which works very well.

And then, you want to get another flour sack towel. You can also use cheesecloth if that’s what you have, but I like these because they’re very reusable. And all we’re going to do is take our flower sack towel and we’re going to put this over the mesh strainer. And then, we’re going to pour this oil through the mesh strainer so that we get out all the little tiny bits of the basil. And as you’re whirling this in the blender for about a minute, you want to make sure before you go ahead and pour this, that the basil or whatever herb you’re making for your fresh herbal oil is very well pulverized.

And the basil after about a minute was in fact very well pulverized. So I’m just going to go ahead and pour this down into my flower sack lined mesh strainer. Now you’re just going to leave this for a few minutes and let the oil drip down into your bowl, or in my case, the measuring cup. And once we feel it stopped dripping, we’ll move on to the next step. What you’re looking for is the oil draining down considerably from your lined strainer and it getting to the point where you’re just seeing one little drip every second or so, and the consistency of the basil or whatever herb you’re using that you’ve drained now looks almost like a pesto.

At this point, what we’re going to do is gather up our flour sack towel here or cheesecloth if that’s what you’re using, and we’re just going to give this a few good squeezes.

There we go. Just get kind of the last bits of the olive oil out of here. Initially, when you squeeze this, you’ll probably get a nice stream of oil, and then eventually, it’ll just pitter out a little bit to just a drip, drip, drip. And once you reach that point, then you know that you’re done.

Now, when you open up your flower sack towel, you’re going to have this little mass of the herbs, in this case, the basil. Now, don’t throw this out. You have a couple of options. You can go ahead and just put this in a little container like an ice cube tray, and you can freeze this. And then, when you want to add it to, ’cause it’s a small amount, if you want to add it to a soup or a stew or a pasta dish, you’re all set.

As a matter of fact, it can really be a stand-in for somewhat of a mock pesto sauce. You can take this and add this with a little parmigiano-reggiano and some butter or additional olive oil and toss your pasta in it and it’ll be delicious.

Now you have a couple of options as to how to store this fresh herbal oil. You can decant it, which is what I’m going to do, but I do recommend that since it does contain the essence of the herbs, that you refrigerate it for its best preservation. Now, olive oil just does congeal in the refrigerator, but once you bring it out of the refrigerator and allow it to come back up to room temperature, it’ll liquefy with no problem.

Then you’ve got this wonderful herbal oil to use in a variety of ways, as something as simple as just making a salad dressing with it, or as I mentioned in the beginning, you can top chicken with it, meats, fish, it just adds a wonderful level of flavor. It’s also great tossed in hot vegetables that you’ve just steamed instead of butter. Now I’m just going to use a funnel and I’m going to go ahead and decant this olive oil, this wonderful herbal olive oil, and you’ll be able to see the beautiful green color. Ooh, this just looks glorious. Now, you can also, if you prefer, to preserve this for an even longer time, ’cause it’ll stay fresh in your refrigerator for at least a few weeks, if not longer, you can pour this into ice cube trays and then just take out one ice cube at a time as you want to use this fresh herbal oil and just let it defrost and you’re all set.

And in the freezer, this’ll stay fresh for at least a month or two. And when I say fresh, it’s not that it’s necessarily going to go bad, it’s just going to be at its peak flavor for about a month or two, just like it’ll be at its peak flavor in the refrigerator for a week or two. Now, if you’d like more recipes where I work with herbs and use them in both cooking as well as medicinal recipes, be sure to click on this video over here where I have a curated playlist with all of that and more…

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