Salt Preserved Basil

I hate to waste anything.   This isn’t a new quality in my life since I started the CSA subscription.   I was pushing hoarder status a couple of years ago simply because I couldn’t stand to let anyone throw away things I thought were still useful.    No, I don’t mean their garbage.   I just mean you don’t have to buy new stuff when the old stuff you already have is good enough.   I really hate to waste food.

Anyway … I had some basil that was starting to stack up on me from the CSA boxes and I didn’t really have a plan to cook with it.   So, I wanted to find a way to keep it longer.    My good friend, Google, led me to this website and a post about three ways to preserve basil.   Freezing, drying and salt preserving.

Hmmm?   I had not thought about the whole salt routine before now.   Let’s give it a try!    How hard is it?   Not very hard.   Clean, dry jar, big canister of salt, add basil, put the lid on it and store in the refrigerator.   Done.    What to see pictures?

Did you know that ‘regular’ or canning salt just means that it does not have iodine added to it?    Somewhere along the line, the government decided that we don’t get enough iodine in our regular diets so now they sneak it into salt and bread.   I think that’s weird.

I tried to do layers but that salt is just too smart and goes to the bottom no matter what.    Good thing to note here is that you can still use the salt when all of the basil is gone.   They say it doesn’t even take on basil flavor.   Again, weird.

Have you ever tried this?    I was thinking that the freezer method might be a good idea too but I’m not sure what the texture will end up like for the basil.    And, my freezer is starting to fill up with all of the fruit that I have bagged up lately.