Hints & TIps

With Thai New Year fast approaching, we thought we’d look at some of the most popular Thai dishes and the herbs and spices used in them.

We’ll start with some of the most common questions people have about Thai cooking ingredients, then offer some tips on where you can find the best Thai recipes so you can celebrate Songkran in style!

What are the leaves used in Thai cooking?

Some of the herbs you’d expect to see in the best Thai foods include:

1. Bay leaves
2. Coriander (and coriander root)
3. Culantro (not to be confused with cilantro, which is another name for coriander!)
4. Curry leaves
5. Dill
6. Holy basil
7. Lemon basil
8. Lemongrass
9. Lime leaves
10. Mint
11. Pandan
12. Parsley
13. Rosemary
14. Sweet basil
15. Thai parsley
16. Thai basil
17. Vietnamese Coriander

Below, we’ve picked out some tasty ideas that include everything you’d expect from a typical English breakfast, along with one or two more left-field ideas to spice up your breakfast plate.

What are the seven Thai spices?

When people in the West think of ingredients used in Asian cooking, they inevitably think of Chinese five spice and Thai seven spice. You can make your own Thai seven spice blend by using the following ground up herbs and spices. Then you’ll be prepared to make some of the best Thai dishes around.

1. Black pepper
2. Chilli powder (we recommend making it from fresh chillies)
3. Cumin
4. Garlic powder
5. Ginger (for a fuller flavour, we suggest grinding it down from fresh root ginger)
6. Ground cloves
7. Star of anise

What are the most popular Thai dishes to make at home?

The following suggestions would make it onto any respectable list of the top 10 foods to try in Thailand. Yet with the right recipes and ingredients, you can enjoy them without even leaving your house!

1.     Thai red or green curry

When it comes to a list of ‘Thai best dishes,’ you can’t fail to include the country’s signature curries. The red variety is typically a little hotter, while the green curry is a little creamier and easier on the tongue. Both share many common ingredients however, including coconut milk, lime leaves, Thai basil (just good old fashioned standard basil leaves will do in many cases), garlic and fish sauce. The red variant also includes ginger, which gives it much of that extra kick! Plus of course you’ll need a curry paste of your choosing, which you can find these days in most major supermarkets.

Recipes: Thai red curry and Thai green curry, both at BBC Good Food.

2.     Tom yum and tom kha soups

Image credit: Recipe Tin Eats

Tom yum soup is a super tasty clear, broth-based meal made with fresh ingredients, including hard herbs lime leaves and lemongrass, chillies, coriander, garlic and galangal, along with king prawns, mushrooms, chicken stock, tomatoes and more. It can be prepared clear, or turned into tom kha soup by simply adding some chilli paste and coconut milk to the broth – giving you two of the best Thai recipes here in one!

Recipe: Recipe Tin Eats

3.     Kao phat with prik nam pla

Kao phat is a Thai fried rice dish that’s simple to make but goes down incredibly well thanks to its flavour-filled combination of fresh ingredients, and is best served with a spicy prik nam pla sauce that gives it a real kick!

The recipe we like best comes from Thai Caliente, and includes the use of Thai bird’s eye chillies or jalapeno chillies to give the sauce its intensity. We also like to add a little coriander on top for garnish, just to give it a little extra colour.

Recipe: Thai Caliente

4.     Pad Thai

Easily one of the most popular Thai dishes in the UK, pad Thai is an ever-so-tasty noodle dish that’s easy to make and even easier to eat! It’s also incredibly versatile, lending itself well to poultry, seafood or vegan-friendly tofu options – making it one of the best Thai foods if your household has varied culinary preferences.

Our favourite fresh ingredients in a pad Thai include chopped fresh ginger, chilli flakes and chopped spring onions – although we like to use chives instead. You’ll also need a slightly unusual rice vinegar (not to be confused with standard malt vinegar!) – and of course, oodles of Thai noodles!

Recipe: Feasting at Home

5.     Larb

Image credit: Taste Australia

A minced meat and herb salad dish, larb can be prepared with beef, chicken, tofu or even with just vegetables. It’s incredibly impressive placed in the middle of a dining table to eat family style, and can work as lunch, a starter at dinner time, or as an accompaniment to a main course.

Packing in green chillies, coriander leaves and fresh mint, it’s got bags of fresh flavour, and as a bonus it even gives off a lovely aroma that’s sure to draw people to the dining table. Definitely some of the best Thai food for almost any time of the day.

Recipe: Taste Australia

6.     Phat kapharo

Phat kapharo is a classic rice-based street food that essentially translates to ‘fried holy basil leaves.’ So as you can imagine, it definitely includes the holy basil we mentioned in our list of Thai leaves above! It also packs in chillies, shallots, minced beef and garlic, alongside both fresh lime juice and lime leaves that give the dish a nice and distinctive zing. Oh, and did we mention the fried egg that’s served on top?! That makes this one of the best Thai dishes if you’re looking to make eyes go wide at your Thai New Year dinner.

Recipe: The Nosey Chef

8.     Som tam

This one is a little bit different. A cold shredded salad, the key ingredient that makes a som tam stand out is papaya. Indeed, the recipe we’ve linked to below doesn’t include any meat or fish whatsoever – although the meal does lend itself well to prawns or even chicken if you prefer. Herb-wise, the star of the show is the Thai sweet basil, and the kick comes from the large number of fresh chillies – although you can tone that down if you don’t like it quite so hot!

Recipe: Eating Thai Food

9.     Pa plao

Our second recipe from Eating Thai Food is also a little unusual. Where we’ve so far presented a lot of curries, salads and ‘mixed bowl’ meals, pa plao is a juicy and salt-covered Thai grilled whole fish dish stuffed with lemongrass, and served with a hot chilli-based seafood dipping sauce. As Thai best dishes go, we think it’s one of the most impressive you could put on anybody’s plate.

Recipe: Eating Thai Food

10.     Foi thong

We’ve saved the sweetest for last with our final recipe – literally! ‘Foi’ in Thai means thread, and ‘thong’ means gold – which is appropriate for this authentic Thai dessert dish that’s essentially a deliciously sweet golden string made from sugar and egg.

It’s served on pandan leaves and traditionally eaten with chopsticks. But if you’re serving this up as one of the top Thai dishes at a British table, let’s be honest – a fork wouldn’t be cheating, would it?

Recipe: VR Recipes

Since 2000, January has been the time for Farmhouse Breakfast Week. However, After last year’s alternative lockdown take on the event, this year it seems to have gone on a hiatus. But that won’t stop us from taking matters into our own hands and sharing some of our favourite tasty breakfast ideas packed with fresh herbs!

What is a farmhouse breakfast?

A farmhouse breakfast (sometimes called a farm kitchen breakfast) is a breakfast using many of the ingredients you’d expect to find grown or reared fresh on a farm – from wholesome grains to delicious eggs and juicy meats. In truth, the term ‘farmhouse breakfast’ is often used interchangeably with a full English breakfast. So that’s what we’ll be focusing on here!

Below, we’ve picked out some tasty ideas that include everything you’d expect from a typical English breakfast, along with one or two more left-field ideas to spice up your breakfast plate.

What should be in a full English breakfast?

There’s no set definition of what a full English contains, but typically it’s a fry up breakfast including things like bacon, sausages, beans, eggs, toast, hash browns and freshly cooked vegetables like mushrooms and tomatoes.

The farm kitchen breakfast recipes we’ve sourced below include creative uses of fresh herbs and other ingredients. We’re biased, of course, but we think they make for the best English breakfast going.

The British breakfast hash recipe we like the most is from Best Recipes UK. It packs in new potatoes, red onions, bacon lardons, free-range eggs and pork sausages alongside some finely chopped parsley, which gives the dish so much texture and richness. If you haven’t tried it, you simply have to – it’s that good!

Not eating meat? Try this one-pan veggie full English with rosemary from Alpha Foodie instead.

When it comes to using avocado for breakfast, there are plenty of options. But we find these English muffin tostadas from HEB to be a particular delight. The combination of lemon and chives gives them a tangy yet rich, slightly oniony flavour that works together so well, and the addition of coriander lends even more depth to the taste. We also like to add some salt that isn’t in the recipe, further bringing out the satisfying richness of the avos!

A full breakfast in its own right, you can also spread these thinly and use them as a delicious alternative to buttered toast to have alongside a more traditional full English breakfast.

One word of warning: because this is an American recipe, you may need to convert some US measurements to UK-friendly ones. This page at Fab Flour should help.

It’s actually a very slight ingredients list, with herbs making up most of the items. Which we absolutely love to see!

The parsley here acts as a garnish, while the thyme and oregano are designed to go into the egg mix itself. The chives meanwhile can be used either way. Or you could do what we do and use them as a bit of both!

Like your eggs a different way on the side of a full English? Try this perfect herb omelette recipe from Taste Australia instead.

Green chilli and parsley-infused yam hash browns

This novel hash brown recipe from Ndudu is the second of the two quirky and unusual recipes we mentioned earlier – and we absolutely love it, for precisely that reason!

It comes from a blog dedicated to modern West African dishes, and features grated yams and onions with pepper, parsley and deseeded green chillies for a little residual heat. It’s all bound together by an egg and then fried in a pan over a low heat. Easy!

Of course, yams are plentiful in both West Africa and America, yet can be especially hard to come by in the UK. But if you’re hoping to use this technique for your own English breakfast – fear not! Simply swap the yams for a grated sweet potato or two instead and keep everything else the same. It won’t be exactly the same, but it will still be darn tasty.

This recipe is great anywhere you’d typically want a hash brown, but it goes especially well with Ndudu’s full English, which you’ll find here.

Veggie breakfast fry up with rosemary or thyme and chilli flakes

Image credit: BBC Good Food

Lastly, we come to the quintessential British breakfast – but with a twist. This full English recipe from BBC Good Food is entirely vegetarian!

You can make it in just 30 minutes, and for our money the standouts are the liberal uses of either thyme or rosemary – along with the heat from the chilli flakes. (We tend to dry out our red chillies to make our own). At just 500 calories per serving, it’s a great way to get a full English into you while still committing to a new year diet. The lack of meat also means it’s a little lighter on the stomach, which is never a bad thing if you have a busy morning ahead.

Missing the meat from this recipe? Just swap the veggie sausages for meat ones, plus add bacon, chorizo bits, the hash brown, egg or muffin recipes we’ve shared above – or anything else that takes your fancy!

It’s that time of the year again! Thankfully, after last year’s bubbled-up six-person festivities, this year we can finally all return to throwing big festive bashes for families and friends alike.

Here at R&G Fresh, we’re always looking for ways to use fresh herbs and spices in our food and drink, and at Christmas we love nothing more than finding creative festive recipes to let us do exactly that!

These are some favourites we can’t wait to use this year. Read on for some of the best ways to incorporate herbs and fresh ingredients for Christmas 2021.

Big herby Yorkshire pudding with chives

Image credit: Food Network

Christmas dinner wouldn’t be the same without a Yorkshire pudding, and we absolutely love the novelty of this giant one from the Food Network.

Better still, the batter mix is infused with mixed herbs (the recipe recommends chives, and we’d go with that too) before being baked in the oven for about 15-20 minutes. The only real challenge is that with the size of it, finding space for it on the shelves amongst everything else could be tricky. We just hope you have a big enough oven!

Fruit mince tart with sage pastry

Image credit: SBS

For dessert, we’ve ignored the traditional Christmas pud and gone for a twist on an altogether different British classic – the humble mince pie.

This festive mint tart recipe by SBS uses sage in the crust to give it a slightly bitter, lemony flavour that perfectly complements the ingredients in the spiced fruity filling.

Speaking of spices, the recipe doesn’t specify what goes into the spice mix, but we like to use equal amounts of cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice (all ground to a fine powder). And that’s part of why we love this dish – it’s just one of the very best ways to incorporate herbs and spices for Christmas.

With National Picnic Week happening from 19^th-27^th June, we decided to help you elevate your picnic with fresh herb recipes the whole family will love!

Read on to learn about the fresh herbs to make your picnic better – and discover the recipes we reckon might make up the ultimate herb-filled food picnic platter.

Garlic and herb cream cheese

Rosemary-infused chocolate mousse

Image credit: The Flavour Bender

Like with any big meal, it’s always nice to finish with something sweet. And this rosemary-infused chocolate dessert from The Flavour Bender is a rich and delicious little bit of luxury that’s easily amongst the best herb-filled food for a picnic.

The rosemary adds an earthiness that’s unusual for a mousse, and really does balance out the sweetness of the chocolate – just as the recipe says. The best bit though is you can change up the amounts and types of chocolate you use, giving each batch you make a bit of a different flavour.

Being a mousse, you can place this dessert in ramekins or small Tupperware pots and whip them out to surprise guests at the end of your picnic. We’re sure they’ll love it – as long as they have room left by that point!

Barbecue season is finally upon us – though you might not know it from the UK weather in recent weeks! Hopefully the sun comes out to play soon and you can enjoy trying out the recipes we’ve featured below.

Here at R&G FRESH, we think fresh herbs can really up your BBQing game, creating a mix of wonderful flavours that are sure to impress family and friends alike.

So, to give you some summer grilling inspiration, we’ve collected ideas for what we think are the best herbs for a BBQ and how to use them.

Did you know that planted snugly in the calendar each March is International Day of Happiness? It’s a day when everyone is officially encouraged to “find positive ways to look after ourselves and each other.”

That got us thinking about all the times we’ve turned to fresh herbs and plants to help us relax, smile, and spread a little joy in our lives.

We don’t just mean using herbs in cooking – though our produce is definitely great for that! Instead, we’ll be looking here at the best plants to boost your mood and how you can use them to do just that.

Herbs with mood-boosting properties

The International Day of Happiness website gives three positive steps we can all take when facing difficult times: keep calm, stay wise, and be kind.

With that in mind, we’ve sorted the plant suggestions below to help you do all three!

Keep calm

There are many things in life we can’t control, but the way we respond to stressful situations is something we can.

One thing you might like to try in high-stress circumstances is brewing a cup of thyme tea. Thyme contains a compound called carvacrol which naturally calms and supports your nervous system. That makes sipping a thyme tea in the office, or at bedtime after a long day, both equally good ideas. You can find a great recipe here.

Another of the best plants to boost your mood is lemongrass. You can use it to make lemongrass oil, which has a fresh, citrusy scent that’s both clean and calming, helping to relieve irritability, prevent drowsiness, and even relax muscles when rubbed onto the skin. Best of all, it’s also really simple to make your own lemongrass oil. There are lots of recipes out there, but we found this one from Times of India simple to follow and highly effective.

What goes into your favourite cocktail? If your automatic answer would be to list a selection of different types of alcohol… well, we’d forgive you!

The truth is that fresh herbs are an underrated, and often overlooked, but still rather key ingredient to some of the most popular concoctions around.

With plenty of occasions coming up, we can’t think of a better time to look at all the different ways to use herbs and ingredients in drinks.

How and when to use herbs in cocktails

As with any food or drink preparation, part of the success when using herbs and ingredients in drinks lies in pairing the right plants and liquor. The other part lies in preparing the herbs properly.

So before you begin mixing, here are the things we’d suggest you keep in mind:

Perfect pairings

Some drinks simply suit certain herbs perfectly. As a quick primer, those heaven-made matches include:

• Coriander and tequila
• Dill and vodka
• Rosemary with any sweet citrus concoction
• Basil and gin
• Mint with… well, almost everything! (More on how to use mint leaves in drinks a little later).

Muddle it up

Instead of crushing your herbs like too many overzealous bartenders at the end of a day-long shift, take care using the proper tools. A muddler is essential here, used with a gentle, firm pressing motion that bruises rather than grinds your ingredients.

Done right, muddling will bring the oils to the surface, allowing them to infuse into the other liquids, bringing out the full flavour of your herb(s) of choice.

Awaken the aromas

This part is less ‘using herbs and ingredients in drinks’, and more on drinks!

Cocktail creation is less a science and more an artform, and that extends to the presentation aspect. Herbs can be a beautiful finishing touch to a cocktail – but for an extra flourish, make sure you release the scents locked inside the leaves.

You can do this through a process called Awakening, whereby you hold the leaves you’ve chosen and bring down your other hand upon them in a gentle slapping motion. If you’ve done it right, you should smell the aroma of your chosen herb begin to fill the room. That’s when you’re ready to use it as a garnish.

Some of our best herb-infused cocktail recipes

Mint

We’ll start with the obvious choice – and by far and away the most versatile. Fresh mint’s smooth, refreshing flavour makes it an ideal way to take the edge of sharper citrussy drinks. However, it also works when paired with a startling variety of other ingredients – from lemon or lime, to chocolate and cream.

Mojitos and juleps might be the most immediate choices for a recipe, but at the time of writing we wanted to keep the winter feel. So instead, check out this creamy and delicious Merry & Bright cocktail recipe from Mountain Cravings.

Basil

Aromatic and earthy in its more common green variety, but spicier and clove-like in its less common purple one, basil makes for a pungent and powerful cocktail ingredient.

One of the most unique we’ve tried is The Fallen Leaf, which muddles both garden green and coppery purple basil leaves before shaking them with white rum, lemon and honey. Visit Kitchen Konfidence for the full recipe and method.

Fresh ginger

Finely-grated fresh ginger goes down incredibly well in a cocktail, giving beverages a strong, spicy flavour.

In particular, ginger complements sour drinks rather nicely – such as in this Ginger Lime Whiskey Sour recipe by Delish. Incredibly easy to make, the method involves cooking up a ginger simple syrup in a saucepan, before adding the mixture to a cocktail shaker with bourbon, lime juice and, perhaps unexpectedly, an egg white! (Don’t worry, it emulsifies with the alcohol, making it safe to consume).

Rosemary

Used in the right amounts, rosemary can add richness and depth to a beverage. Of course, being a ‘hard’ herb, its strong flavour means rosemary can overpower the other flavours too – making it one to be especially careful with.

That flavour profile makes rosemary especially ideal for citrus-infused gin drinks. One such example is this gin-based Rosemary Gimlet from chef David Lebovitz.

Chillies

While our green, leafy produce might be a more obvious option in alcoholic beverages, our chillies can lend a nifty kick to any cocktail.

As recipes go, one of the simplest and most effective we’ve found is this mango, chilli and lime margarita from Taste. Blending tequila and lime juice with peeled fresh mangoes, sugar and half a fresh long red chilli, it’s a wonderfully fruity concoction with a little extra spice. (Our tip: cut slits into leftover chillies and slide one over the side of each glass as an extra-colourful garnish!).

Or for something a little creamier, Jamie Oliver’s frosty-looking boozy Christmas lemonade might go down a treat at New Year. Amongst its ingredients is a green jalapeno chilli, and just the one alcoholic ingredient: white rum (or alternatively Cahaca). Take out the latter and you can turn this into a tasty mocktail instead!

And that’s just a taster

As you can see, there are a number of ways to use fresh herbs in drinks. The only limit really is how creative (or possibly daring!) you’re willing to be.

If we’ve whetted your appetite, don’t stop there! The Spruce Eat’s blog ‘Using Herbs and Spices in Cocktails’ is full of more ways to use herbs and ingredients in drinks. Give it a read and turn opening your drinks cabinet into an adventure for the taste buds!

Feeling inspired? Visit our produce page to get an idea of the different herbs and ingredients you could add to your concoctions. Or head to The Chopping Board for our very own herb-infused food recipes.

Using herbs in your cooking is a great way of enhancing the flavour of your food, but do you know how and when to use them?

Here’s a quick guide that explains everything you need to know about cooking with herbs!

How to cook with herbs

Before we explain the best way to cook with herbs, we first have to understand the difference between the two variations:

• Woody, or hard
• Tender, or soft

Woody herbs tend to have tougher leaves while soft herbs have thin, fragile leaves. Due to this difference, you need to add them to your meals at different times.

As well as this, both woody and tender herbs can be used fresh, dried or frozen, which also plays a part in when you should add them to your dish.

When to add fresh herbs to your cooking

Soft herbs

Tender herbs, as we explained earlier, have soft stems and delicate leaves. As a result, whilst they impart robust flavours initially, the intensity can diminish with prolonged cooking.

For this reason, you should add soft herbs towards the end of the process, where they can deliver maximum flavour that doesn’t diminish due to heat damage.

Woody herbs

As mentioned before, woody herbs have tougher leaves and woody stems, so are much more robust. They are generally added during the cooking process and removed once the dish is ready. The heat helps the cells in the leaves to break down, so the fragrant oils can start interacting as the food cooks.

When to add frozen herbs to your cooking

Freezing herbs when they’re fresh is a great way to preserve them for future use. You can freeze them in oil, water or simply in the bag they came in.

Frozen woody herbs can be added early on in the cooking process, giving them plenty of time to thaw and infuse the dish.

Frozen soft herbs will defrost quicker, so you should add them a minute or so before you finish cooking, giving them time to warm up but not so much that it affects their flavour.

When to add herbs to uncooked dishes

Herbs can be used raw to enhance the taste of anything, including drinks, desserts and salads.

Salads, in particular, can be transformed from an ordinary plate of greens to something that smells and tastes delicious just by adding herbs.

If you are planning to use herbs at room temperature or served cold, you can add them as you prepare the dish.

If you’re a first-time herb user, you may find yourself worried about making mistakes, but don’t worry. Experimenting and learning is just part of the fun! The more you use them, the better your food will taste and you’ll get better with pairing different flavours together.

If you’re wondering which herbs to experiment with next, take a look at Our Produce section for inspiration. We also offer a selection of chillies and other ingredients to enhance your cooking, which may also get your creative juices flowing.

Do you have any questions about any of our fresh-cut herbs and ingredients? Please do get in touch with us and we will answer them for you.

The lockdown, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, affected many aspects of our lives.

One change was that people started experimenting with new recipes, some of which included fresh herbs, as was evidenced by the herb sales surge reported by Waitrose.

At R&G FRESH, we are passionate about encouraging people to use more fresh herbs and ingredients in cooking, so we are excited about this trend. However, we are also aware that you as a consumer want to make the most out of your purchase too.

That’s why we decided to offer our advice and expertise on how to store your fresh cut herbs and ingredients so they last longer.

Different types of fresh herbs

Before we talk about how to store fresh cut herbs, it’s important to understand the difference between hard herbs and soft herbs. The reason why this distinction is important is because the two types ‘behave’ quite differently from each other.

Understanding this difference allows us to treat them the right way, helping to prolong their freshness.

Soft herbs

Soft, or tender, herbs have fleshy, delicate stems and a strong flavour that loses its intensity upon cooking, which is why these herbs are usually added at the end of the cooking process. Some examples of soft herbs are:

• Coriander
• Basil
• Mint
• Chives
• Dill
• Parsley
• Lovage
• Marjoram
• Sorrel
• Tarragon

Since they are quite fragile, they need to be treated differently from hard herbs.

Woody herbs

Hard, or woody, herbs are sturdier than their soft counterparts and are added to a dish during the cooking process, where they slowly release their flavour. Usually grown in warmer climates, these herbs have woody stems and tougher leaves that are resistant to moisture loss. As a result, they keep for much longer.

Woody herbs include:

• Rosemary
• Sage
• Thyme
• Lime leaves
• Lemongrass
• Curry leaves
• Bay leaves
• Lemon thyme

What are the factors that affect herb freshness?

Fresh herbs are still respiring after being harvested and as such, need certain conditions in which to thrive. When they were a part of a plant, they could manage their own conditions and remain healthy.

Here are the factors that affect herb freshness.

Light

Whilst plants need light for photosynthesis, fresh-cut herbs actually don’t require light. In fact, exposure to bright light can turn their leaves yellow as it damages the chlorophyll (the green pigment that is responsible for photosynthesis).

Oxygen

Again, while almost all living entities require oxygen, most cut herbs start turning brown if they are exposed to too much air.

Moisture

All fresh-cut herbs require an optimum amount of moisture to remain fresh. Too little and they start drying, but too much and they start rotting.

Temperature

Temperature plays a significant role in ensuring herb freshness. Too warm, and the metabolic rate goes up and the herbs start deteriorating at a faster rate. Too cold, and the water inside the cells freezes and damages the cell walls, leading to your fresh herbs becoming mushy.

The best temperature to store fresh herbs is 3° C to 5° C This is the temperature range inside refrigerators, making them the ideal place to keep your fresh produce.

With these factors in mind, here are our recommendations on how to store your fresh cut herbs so they last longer.

The best way to store fresh cut herbs

In the fridge

If you’re storing woody herbs in the fridge try to keep them in their original packaging, or in an airtight container.

As with woody herbs, soft herbs should be kept in their original packaging until they are needed. Any leftovers should be stored in an airtight container in the fridge.

The only exception here is basil, whose leaves start discolouring if the temperature is low. It should be kept out of the fridge, at room temperature, where it gets light but not direct sunlight.

Using these methods, you can store your fresh herbs for up to two weeks.

In the freezer

When using herbs as garnish, you want them looking fresh and beautiful so keeping them in the fridge is best. However, if they are going to be used in cooking, you want to preserve their flavour more than their appearance.

If that is the case, you can freeze any leftovers you may have.

To do that, simply remove them from their packaging, chop them, and put them in ice trays. You can pack in the chopped leaves alone or top them up with a flavourless oil (like sunflower oil) or water. Once frozen into cubes, you can pop them out of the tray and store them in freezer bags.

Out of the three options, you’ll get the best flavour if you use oil. However, you can freeze your herbs for weeks, if not months by placing them in a plastic bag.

Simply take out as many herb cubes as you need for the recipe and add to the dish as it cooks. The heat will melt the frozen cube, releasing the herb’s flavour into your food.

How to store fresh ingredients so they last longer

In addition to herbs, we offer a range of other ingredients that help you take your cooking to the next level. Here’s how to store some of them so they last longer.

Chillies

Freezing chillies is a great option. They defrost rapidly so can be used as fresh. To store chillies, take them out of their packaging and remove the stem and the ‘cap’ that joins it to the body, as this is where they start growing mouldy. These can then be stored in a container lined with a kitchen towel.

Root ginger

The best way to store root ginger is in the refrigerator without cutting it up. The skin of this rhizome keeps moisture in, allowing it to last for around three weeks.

If you want to store it for longer, you can freeze the root whole or mince it first. When freezing it whole, leave the skin on and put it in a freezer bag. You can then take it out when you need it and grate what you need without thawing it.

You can also mince or grate the ginger to get a paste, which you can portion out into an ice tray without any additional water or oil needed. Once frozen, the cubes can be transferred into a freezer bag and you can simply take out as many cubes as you need in your cooking.

Turmeric root

Whilst most commonly used as a dried powder, turmeric root has a much fresher flavour and will impart that same golden colour to the dish.

Like root ginger, it can be stored in the fridge or freezer after you’ve washed it well and dried it thoroughly. Since moisture leads to mould, drying it well is important. It also helps if you wrap it loosely in a kitchen towel and then put it in a bag before it goes into the fridge.

To freeze it, cut up the root into portion-sized chunks and put in a freezer bag. Squeeze out the excess air from the bag before sealing and freeze.

When you need it for a recipe, you can take out exactly as much as you need, without having to thaw the entire quantity.

Padrón peppers

Padrón peppers are also called ‘Spanish Roulette’ as most of them are sweet, but once in a while, you get one that is hot! These peppers can be stored in the fridge in a plastic bag and best kept in the vegetable drawer.

Edible flowers

Edible flowers are very delicate, and normally don’t last more than two or three days. However, you can keep them for up to a week if you keep them on a damp paper towel inside a container in the fridge.

As you can see, storing fresh herbs and ingredients is quite easy. If done properly, you can enjoy their delicious flavour for several weeks.

If you’re interested in trying out different ingredients in your kitchen, our range of fresh produce might inspire you. For any questions you may have, please do get in touch.