Preserving Basil

I went a “tad” crazy planting basil this year. This is a bed of basil in my

yard. I have another one I didn’t take a picture of.  I think there are 10 plants here. I had another 8 plants in that other bed.

I have enjoyed very much having fresh basil in the garden to run out and pick whenever I wanted. When the basil started to bloom it was time to pick it all. I ended up with about 5 pounds of basil!

 

 

It smelled amazing in our house. But picking all the leaves from the stems took FOREVER!!!

 

In this picture you can see all of the basil leaves in the basket. I was pretty excited and slightly overwhelmed on what to do with all that basil. The first thing that popped in my head was pesto! So I made 3 kinds!!!

 

This one is Almond Lemon Basil Pesto. It’s pretty much amazing. I bet you want the recipe, huh? I found it here.

I also froze some. I took some basil and chopped it up and stuffed it in ice cube trays, filled it with water and froze it. When the ice cubes were done I tossed them in a zip top bag and now whenever I make a soup I can toss in an ice cube of basil!

 

The last of the basil I dried in the dehydrator. The garage smelled amazing!

 

I also decided to try to save the seeds. We let a few plants go to seed and hung up the seed pods to dry to hopefully save the seeds for next years garden.

 

I hope you have found some interesting ideas on how to keep the flavors of summer with you all winter long.