Tips for storing and preserving herbs and spices

Want to keep your herbs and spices flavourful and make them last longer? Of course you do. Here are some fail-proof tips for your dried and fresh herbs and spices:

• All herbs and spices need to be stored in a cool, dark, dry place. Dried herbs and spices in the whole or broken form keep longer than ground ones.
• Once they are ground, they begin to lose their taste and potency immediately.
• So if you are buying in the whole state, be sure to grind only what you need immediately.
• Or create something with them and then preserve the spices. Make paste, pesto (herbs in oil) or sauce and then freeze them — or use them in some recipe that you plan to freeze.
• Always date the container or jar and check the contents frequently.

• Most fresh herbs should be washed, patted thoroughly dry with paper towels and slipped into a plastic bag, then stored in the refrigerator, where they will last for up to several days.
• Fresh herbs are delicate, so they can be tricky to dry.
• To prevent them from cracking and to minimize loss, let the herbs rest on the paper towel in the bag.

• Keep fresh basil in a jar of water, as if it were a bouquet of flowers, until you're ready to use it. Trim off the bottom of the stems before you put them in the water.
• Try to buy the basil no more than one to three days before you plan to use it. The same trick works with parsley, watercress and other leafy herbs.

Freeze ice-cube trays filled with chopped fresh herbs. Then pop the cubes into freezer bags so you can defrost just what you need when you need it.

• Chefs know that if you freeze the entire leaves of fresh herbs such as basil, they'll often crackle, which causes them to lose flavour.
• You won't have this problem if you wash and dry the herbs, then chop them up before freezing. Freeze your prepared herbs in freezer bags; they'll last for up to six months.

• Store-bought dried herbs and spices should be kept in a cool, dark cabinet. Most will keep up to about a year before losing their essential nature.
• Don't store them in an open rack on the wall. Exposure to light and heat will hurry the loss of flavour in these delicate seasonings.

• It's tempting to line up your favourite herbs and spices over the stove, where they'll be handy for cooking.
• But this location speeds the drying process, causing them to lose flavour faster. Over the sink is also a bad storage spot — too much humidity.

Don't hang fresh herbs in bunches on the wall; bugs will get to them if the light doesn't do them in first.

Fresh rhizomes, such as ginger and galangal, can be kept at room temperature for several weeks. The same goes for chilies and garlic.

• A special dehydrator is great for drying fresh herbs, but if you don't have one, you can use the microwave.
• Set the microwave on half power, and turn it on in 10-second intervals until the herbs are dry.

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