Nothing, and I mean NOTHING…
Compares to the flavors of fresh herbs picked footsteps from your door. This morning I tip-toed out on my front deck to pick fresh sage leaves for the pork chop recipe I was putting in the crockpot, and momentarily mourned the fact I can’t enjoy those flavors all year long…
The first thing I’m doing once our home addition project is complete is setting up some windowsill herb gardens so we have fresh herbs all year long. (Previously, my south-facing windows have not been conducive to growing stuff…)
Herbs seem to either be feast or famine. I either have an obscene amount of fresh parsley, or none all all. There are plenty of different ways to preserve fresh herbs for later, but I recently stumbled upon a technique I hadn’t previously used (I know, I must live under a rock, huh?)
Preserving herbs in salt is an old method that works beautifully for two reasons:
a) it’s fast and easy
b) it’s delicious
What more do you need? Although I’ll still probably dry my herbs or save them in oil, this is officially my new favorite way to preserve herbs.
The Best Herbs for Herb Salt
Honestly? Anything will work. My herb salt is pretty heavy on the parsley, because I have parsley coming out my ears, but I also toss in handfuls of whatever else I have growing. Just think about the herbs you like to eat together, and make your custom herb salt blends according to what your palate prefers. Here are a few good options, but the sky’s the limit:
- Parsley
- Dill
- Mint
- Oregano
- Sage
- Thyme
- Cilantro
- Rosemary
- Basil
Homemade Herb Salt Recipe
- 3 loosely-packed cups of fresh herbs of your choice (see list above)
- 1/2 cup coarse salt (I use and love this one)
Wash the herbs and remove coarse stems and any discolored leaves. Dry thoroughly.
Place the herbs and salt in a food processor and pulse until you have a coarse grind. Be careful not to make a paste or puree, though.
Don’t want to use a food processor? No worries. Simply grab your knife and cutting board and go crazy. Coarsely chop the leaves, then add the salt on top and continue to chop the salt/herbs together until you have a coarse, uniform mixture.
Place the herb mixture in a glass jar, and place in the fridge for 7-14 days to let the flavors meld. Give it a shake every day or so.
Store in the fridge. The salt in this recipe acts as a preservative, so your herbs should last 6 months, or even longer.
Use your homemade herb salt in any recipes that would benefit from an extra punch. Obviously, it is very salty, so I would start by using it 1:1 for the salt in your recipes. Rub it on roasts, sprinkle it in stews, slather it on your chickens before roasting them… You get the idea!
Homemade Herb Salt Recipe Notes:
- Use coarse sea salt, kosher salt, or canning/pickling salt for this recipe. This is the coarse sea salt I use and love (affiliate link). PLUS, for a limited time, use my code HOMESTEAD for 15% off your total order at Redmond’s salt.
- There are many different techniques to make homemade herb salt. Some folks layer whole herbs in salt, some folks dry the mixture before jarring it, etc. I like this method because it’s fast and easy, but feel free to experiment.
Homemade Herb Salt Recipe
- Category: Seasoning
Ingredients
- 3 loosely-packed cups of fresh herbs of your choice. Parsely, oregano, basil, mint, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, and/or dill are all great choice.
- 1/2 cup coarse salt (like this)
Instructions
- Wash the herbs and remove coarse stems and any discolored leaves. Dry thoroughly.
- Place the herbs and salt in a food processor and pulse until you have a coarse grind. Be careful not to make a paste or puree, though.
- Don’t want to use a food processor? No worries. Simply grab your knife and cutting board and go crazy. Coarsely chop the leaves, then add the salt on top and continue to chop the salt/herbs together until you have a coarse, uniform mixture.
- Place the herb mixture in a glass jar, and place in the fridge for 7-14 days to let the flavors meld. Give it a shake every day or so.
- The salt in this recipe acts as a preservative, so your herbs should last 6 months, or even longer.
- Use your homemade herb salt in any recipes that would benefit from an extra punch. Rub it on roasts, sprinkle it in stews, slather it on your chickens before roasting them… You get the idea!
Would you keep this in the fridge for the 6 months, or can it then go into the cupboard?
Store it in the fridge for the whole time. 🙂
This is great thank you! I want to preserve lots of herbs too. Now how do you store herbs in oil?
Check out Jill’s recipe here: http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2017/07/preserve-fresh-herbs-olive-oil.html
Jill, you never cease to amaze me! You are a wealth of knowledge for this fledgling homesteader. Going to try this with my own abundance of parsley. What’s your secret with growing sage? I always kill it and never grow the plant bigger than when i bought it.
Thanks for the recipe!
Well, I wish I had some magic sage tips, but I just usually buy the seedling and stick it in my planter, hehe. It doesn’t grow as big as my parsley, but does OK. Now my cilantro, is a different story. Can’t seem to keep that stuff alive!
sage does very well for me. I grow from seed in hanging baskets in a part sun area. I probably err on the side of less watering because I always forget the baskets lol. This idea of the herbs in salt is brilliant. I have way too much basil sage and oregano right now so I will make some up today.
Thanks!
my mom has a sage plant that keeps coming back every year. It’s nearly knee high and 3-4 ft around. She tried to transplant it and nearly killed it. It likes the crappy soil and being in front of a south facing brick wall in a sheltered nook here in Ontario.
Me neither! Always Bolts! Never makes nice leaves! Sun OR Shade !! ?
Jill, I’ll stick my nose in with a recommendation for cilantro: plant it often, harvest it frequently. The more you harvest it (in general) the more it will put out leaves. If it insists on bolting, just plant some more! Here in NE, I may plant three plantings through the summer, and it also does really great in cooler weather, so in cold frames or hoophouses it’ll last all winter!
p.s. Plant that cilantro from seed. Don’t waste time with garden store plants. It’s already thinking about bolting if it’s in the store. #protip
In my opinion, it is ALL about the variety. If you’re looking for cilantro leaves aplenty, buying a packet of Burpee cilantro seeds will not produce what you’re looking for. Order the specific varieties Santo or Leisure (there may be others) that have been bred to produce lush foliage and are very slow to bolt.
Always grow herbs from seed. Plants in the store aren’t hearty to produce. My cousin is a arborist and garden guru and told me this and changed my herb game. I think having them from seed they are acclimated to our weather (temp, winds, rain, shade/sun) where plants were in optimum growing environment from the companies and when they get put in our yards with different environments I don’t think they grow as well. Just my opinion I don’t have any science to back it up.
I plant my sage in the corner of a raised bed and it comes back every year. I only have to replace it if my husband takes it out with the rest of the garden waste.
I have had an herb garden for years. How have I never made this? I am going to try it ASAP, probably today! You are right about herbs being feast or famine. Thanks for the great post!
I know– I missed it too, until now!
I am Acadian by heritage and this is a typical Acadian recipe- known around here as “Herbes Salées”, though I have never made my own as I am just learning about different herbs now and how to grow them. I just buy this in jars from the grocery store. 🙂 Nice to know ‘how-to’!
Very cool to know its “real” name! 🙂
Hi Kerri! I have recently read a cookbook about Acadian food called, ” Pantry and Palate: Remembering and rediscovering Acadian Food” By Simon Thibault. Although I am not Acadian myself, I do very much love many of the recipes! I noticed one of the recipes was for salted green onions (called Oignons sal^ees). As I am a (newly) avid herb gardener, i wanted to know more about salt preservation for herbs and that is why I happened upon this wonderful website! I have since learned from my research (as I am a writer, or wanna be writer lol), that humans have been preserving many fresh herbs, vegetables and meat with salt, for hundreds of years now! And to boot, I’ve also learned about the interesting history of salt itself! My first interest in salt preservation came from re-reading the Little House on the Prairie books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was amazed by how they learned to preserve fresh food way back in the late 1800’s. Anyway, sorry I rambled on so much, but this cookbook, which I’m looking at right now, has some really wonderful recipes (which many include the salted green onions). I am especially thinking about trying/making Rappie Pie.
People have been preserving foods with salt for almost as long as there have been people, not just since the late 1800’s. Drying and using salt were the earliest methods people used. Salt was probably first used along the sea coasts.
Hey Jill, when your preserving your herbs in oil are you talking about just sticking them in a jar with olive oil? I have been just plain old drying them chopping them and storing in pantry to use all winter. Is that ok or am I poisoning my family….lol
P.S. I am new to your site and love it, prefect for my life style and our farm.
Thanks for all the great info!!~
Leslie
Yes, you can put them in olive oil and I’ve tried freezing them in ice cube trays in the oil. Kinda handy. But drying them is totally fine, too!
If you add fresh herbs to olive oil without drying them you run the risk of botulism. At least that’s the case for fresh garlic, but I think it applies to any moisture containing addition…
Jill, I love this idea and wish I’d known about it sooner. Thank you for an excellent tip. I also wish I could share all my sage with you and your readers, as it is taking over whole swaths of my yard. No secret to growing sage except neglect!
I’ll trade you some of your sage for my parsley! 😉
Jill, why, if the salt is a preservative, does it need to be in the fridge? If one dried the herbs first, and then mixed w/salt, could it go in the pantry/cupboard?
Thank you for all your information!!
If you dried the herbs first, you wouldn’t really need to mix it with the salt.
There are methods that have you mix the minced herbs and salt together, then dry on a cookie sheet. Since ALL the moisture is removed that way, you can store that type of herb salt in the pantry. However, since these are fresh herbs with some moisture still in them, it’s best to keep them in the fridge.
Loving the info! I wanted to ask, have you ever experienced salt preserved this way go bad because it was stored in the cupboard?
Thanks in advance.
Wow!
I also never new of this way to preserve herbs! I’m going out back and start picking!
Thank you Jill!
Enjoy Nancy!
Jill you are truly an inspiration to many! I absolutely love this idea of preserving my herbs and I too must live under a rock because it’s the first I’ve heard. Thanks for your work, information and passion for life on a homestead!
Don’t worry Kimberly– I had been missing the boat on it, too! 🙂
Hi Jill…
Can chives be preserved in this manner with the salt. Love chives. This is a great idea as here in WI my herbs freeze out during the winter and I plant new each spring….so no re-occuring new plants in spring.
Oh yes you can! I am Acadian and my grandma would preserve her chives this way. During the summer she would add her parsley then very tiny chopped carrots when they would become ready in the garden. Now that she’s gone I find myself reading these blogs to try and reproduce what I saw her make for years but I sadly never asked her for tips.
I like the idea of preserving in salt. It set me to thinking that, since we count on sugar to preserve preserves, could we use coarse sugar to preserve the “sweet” herbs/spices? What do you think? I mean other than “who is this crazy old woman?”.
Hmmm… interesting idea! I know the salt works because of it’s specific preservative properties, and not sure sugar would quite have the same action. But, would be interesting to experiment!
My parsley has already gone to seed. I tried drying in the freezer, hanging it upside down, and drying it in a paper bag with holes in it. I failed miserably on all accounts. Have to limit salt intake, soooo, any other suggestions?
Hi Karen,
I dry all of my herbs – oregano, marjoram, sage, tarragon, rosemary, parsley, thyme, etc, this way: (If possible, cut herbs when most flavorful.) Wash selected herbs gently (attached to their stems) in sink or large basin filled with water. Remove and let drain in collander, or, wrap in toweling to blot away most of water. Set up a drying area on a table by spreading a sheet or terry toweling over plastic (to protect table from moisture). Lay out the herbs thinly so that each stem can dry individually. Depending on the humidity and temperature of the room, this could take a few days or up to 2 weeks. When herbs are completely dry and brittle, store in large plastic food storage bags and label. To use: take out several dried stems and strip leaves into a bowl. Store the leaves in a tightly lidded jar in cupboard for everyday use. The herbs left whole, on their stems, will keep their flavor much longer, up to 2 years.
You can take more salt. I make sole water from naturally processed Mediterranean and Himalayan salt. Then I put 50 ml of sole in a quart of water and wait 1 day for the sole to structure the water. I drink 3 quarts a day. That is 36 grams of salt. The sole changes salt and water into a super natural miracle. Study sole water, Arizona magnetite sand, and ormus.
Thanks! I’m always looking for ways to preserve the bounty from my herb garden.
I also discovered the herb salt idea last year. However, after mixing I dehydrate the herb mix. That way it can stay on the counter. Mold has not been a problem.
How long do you dehydrate
Thanks,Thanks for salt and fresh herbs,this will do well with my parsley because i have it growing all over the place. I have a question? Can i use sugar and mint like this because i have mint all over the place. Thanks for all your information.YOU ROCK GIRL LOL
Guess what I’ll be doing tonight with the TONS of parsley (and rosemary, dill, sage, cilantro, basil, etc.) I have! I bet this is great and what a wonderful way to preserve those delicious herbs from the garden. This could even make a cute gift idea in the right packaging. Thank you!
My friend makes this all the time. She is from Quebec and grew up doing this her whole life. She puts carrot in hers too. What do you think? I see recipes where a clove of garlic is added, also lemon zest sometimes.
Regarding using sugar. I’ve made some Rose petal sugar, Lavender sugar, Mint sugar, Lemon zest sugar and Orange peel sugar this past weekend, as a fun project with my 4year old daughter. I dry the specific herb or fruit with my hydrator and add to a cup and a half of sugar. You can mix a powder colourant as well to make it all pretty and store it in a glass jar. Shake for a few days and leave for about 2weeks for the fragrance to set in. Wonderful in making ice teas,cookies,scones,cake,anything that takes sugar.
Thank you for posting this recipe. The minute I saw this I had to read your article. My mother-in-law used to talk of Salted Herbs and she said it was a key ingredient in Pea Soup, she called “Herbs de Sole” a Canadian French term I imagine. I have been growing my own herbs for years and am always looking for interesting ways to preserve them for winter use.
Ok, so I recently got into the whole aerogarden thing. I have herbs coming up like crazy (in January no less!) and looked at Pinterest for some ideas on how to preserve them. Then I saw the salt method and was actually going to write to you and see what you thought about it and, look here, you already wrote about it, years ago! Lol You are my go to person for all things homesteading. Thank you!!
I add in lemon zest too and dry the whole mixture then put it in a sprinkle jar for veggies, proteins… anything really. So delish!
I was so excited to find this recipe. My visiting son cooked supper for me and brought everything needed which included coarse salt and lots of fresh herbs. Upon completion he was going to pitch the leftover herbs but I rescued them. I added a bunch of my own and created this herb rub. Perfect!!
That’s awesome! 🙂 I hope you enjoy using the herb salt rub on your meals this season!
Hi Cris!
I had found a recipe that uses this salt with cherry tomatoes and olive oil, that I recall were roasted briefly in the oven, and then packed into jars to keep in the fridge. For the life of me, I cannot find that recipe! Can you provide a link? Thanks so much!
Jill does not have a recipe for that on her website. I hope you find a great one online somewhere! It sounds tasty.