Special Herb-Infused Oils
I’ve been running into some serious computer problems lately, but it looks like I’m back for a bit at least!
So I’d like to share with you all a really, really easy recipe. I love fresh herbs in the summer, and buy way more than I could ever possibly consume. I dry a lot of them (upside down in a paper bag) which works like a charm, but I wanted to find another way that I could preserve those yummy summer flavors.
So I settled on infused olive oils! I thought that it would be really difficult, and that it wouldn’t turn out, but they ended up being wonderful. Now the kind of oil you makes really depends on your tastes, but some of the ones I made were: blood orange; citrus (orange, lemon, and lime); herbs du provence (rosemary, thyme, garlic); lemon dill; and green meanie. Green meanie is the most delicious – every fresh herb I could find, including garlic, thyme, dill, rosemary, and basil. All you have to do is pick a flavor combination that you love (I made my mom some straight basil oil) and then find a clean, pretty bottle. Place the herbs in the bottle (the more the better, I say!) and then fill to the top with olive oil. Let it sit at least a week – the flavor will be nice and intense by then. It keeps indefinitely, or at least so it seems. And the best part is, when you use some of it you can just refill the bottle with more oil and that way it lasts forever!
I like to use these oils as an easy salad dressing, as a marinade for chicken or fish, to dip bread it, and pretty much anything else you can think of that needs a bit of light herb flavor. Go crazy! Add peppers or flowers or anything you want. The possibilities are endless (and I use this in a lot of my recipes so it never hurts to have some on hand).
