We are taking a short break from my series about food to interject with a blog post on freezing herbs. Someone in one of my classes asked about it, as she has more freezer space than space to dry herbs. Before she asked me, I had never actually heard of anyone freezing herbs for medicinal purposes. After doing research, the answer to the question is…
Yes…
And no…
A lot of us know that frozen berries and vegetables are excellent because they are picked at their peak. They are then flash frozen to keep all of the good vitamins and minerals in excellent condition for when you are ready to use them. So why not herbs?
It highly depends on the herbs. There are some that stay good through the winter outside, called wintergreens (that has nothing to do with the artificial flavor), that you can actually harvest throughout winter because the frost doesn’t damage them. I call them by their scientific name, Pyrola, so that people don’t think I’m talking about bubble gum. You could obviously freeze pyrola if you didn’t want to have to out and dig through snow and ice to get your pyrola leaves. Freezing also works well for roots. In a study done, freeze drying the ginger root was shown to preserve the medicinal properties better than heat drying them. The freeze dried root was not as potent as the fresh herb however.
However, there are some that would wilt if you put them in the freezer. These tend to be softer, tender leafy herbs like mint. To make it so that they don’t wilt, you can either paint oil on the leaves and store them in a freezer bag or you can fill ice cube trays with water and the leaves and freeze them.
Another way to freeze these herbs is to make a paste out of them. Basically, put the herbs in a food processor or blender with a little bit of oil and then freeze them in ice cube trays. If you like to make teas and want ready made teas in the winter, you can make your tea or decoction, let it cool down and freeze in ice cube trays or freezer ready bowls.
Right now, I do not have a comprehensive list of things that can be successfully frozen, so it is something I will have to play with next summer. If you do some playing around, or have successfully frozen some Alaskan herbs, I’d love to hear about your experience!
