you can dry it... hang it upside down to dry in the shade.

Cut back 1/3 of the plant, wash thoroughly. Remove the leaves, and spin dry in a salad spinner. Put in a freezer ziplock bag, squish the air out, and freeze. You can put a LOT of basil into a quart ziplock baggie. It keeps its color, and its very easy to unzip, crack off a pinch or two, and zip it back shut. Its just like using fresh basil in cooked recipes. I've found this to be BY FAR the easiest, most flavorful, and most compact way to store basil.

I've never had frozen basil turn black, but if this is a problem for you, simply blanch the basil briefly first. Dry off excess moisture on paper towelling, then freeze. I just put whole leaves and some sprigs into a plastic container and pop it into the freezer. I wonder if people who have their basil turn black have chopped their basil first? I know that chopping basil does bruise it - probably the bruising worsens once it's frozen. I never chop basil - I tear it, if I want smaller pieces.

Thanks everyone. I am going to try freezing a bunch and see what happens. This is the first year I have had tons of basil. Most years it is kind of stunted no matter how much I pinch it back. This year it is full and bushy, just the way I like it.

I do the same thing as Heathen. I just tie it together on a piece of string, allowing some airspace between the sprigs for circulation mind you, and then just hang it in the kitchen. It's not only decrotive and tasty, but makes the kitchen smell wonderful for a while.

I actually prefer the dried basil as I use it mainly in soups, stews and meatballs. Anytime I want Basil I just break off a couple of leaves, grind them between my fingers in my hand and sprinkle :D Actually I've found that the stuff that I hung up last year grinds so easily now because it is SO dry.

I also didn't get many brown ones either. I did get a few but most of it stayed green even after a full year of hanging.

{{gwi:907391}}

Best Wishes
Amino-X

How does the flavor of home-dried basil compare to fresh or frozen?

IMO, dried basil is almost without flavour. Frozen basil keeps its flavour well. I guess everyone's taste buds are different.

Well, it's two different flavors. It just depends on how your going to use it. Drying it does change the flavor, but not in a bad way IMO.

My reccomendation is to experiment. Hang some in a place where it can get good air circulation, like opposite an air-conditioner register or in a high-traffic hallway, and let it dry for about a month then crumble it up and try it in a recipe. If you don't care for it, then you'll know. :)

As abundant as Basil is you can actually save it in all the ways reccomended here so you'll always have some ready for any recipe. Dry for soups, stews and pasta sauces; Blanched and frozen for Salads and garnishment and Blended with 1/4 cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and frozen for a bit of mid-winter Pesto. :)

Best Wishes
Amino-X

I dry whole leaves in my dehydrator just until crispy (only takes a couple of hours) and then place them in a canning jar...DO NOT CRUSH LEAVES UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO USE IN A RECIPE...this preserves the flavor.

Someone said they prefer drying basil, because they use it in soup.

Soup is one of the places where fresh basil's flavor difference will be most obvious, as the essential oils don't partially evaporate, but get trapped by the liquid of the soup. In fact, I've found that I can use less fresh basil in soupy food, because the flavor does get trapped.

Most of the essential oils which give basil its flavor vanish entirely when you dry it. This is why dry basil (as you buy in the store) smells almost completely unlike fresh basil.

If someone is growing any of the many special varieties of basil, like lemon, licorice, cinnamon, or holy basil, they need even more to ensure that it's fresh/frozen basil they're using, because it's a different amount of specific essential oils which cause those to smell special.

For example, all basils have some small amount of each of the following, but the specific type has so much extra that it changes the scent:

Lemon basil: limonene (same chemical which gives lemon peel its scent) and citrol
Licorice basil: anethol (same chemical which gives anise its licorice scent)
Cinnamon basil: Cinnamate (same as real cinnamon)

Holy and african blue basil both have a camphor smell, from actual camphene, while regular sweet basil has a clove scent from eugenol, the same chemical as is in cloves.

Anyway, all of those essential oils evaporate when you dry
basil, leaving only the vague, generic scent of dry basil, without any of the character of the real thing.

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Here is a link that might be useful: Wikipedia on Basil's essential oils

Other things you might want to try-
Basil can be preserved in jars in oil - use a light flavoured oil so that you don't overwhelm the flavour. You can pack the basil lightly into jars with oil, and leave it like that, or infuse for a few weeks, strain out the leaves and add new ones to get a strongly infused oil.
Basil vinegar can be made the same way as mint vinegar/mint sauce, and does add a wonderful flavour in cooking.
Dried basil in my opinion is a bit lacking in flavour. I use basil mint during winter, which is much more frost hardy and gives a good flavour, similar to basil, but not quite the same.
Sacred basil is sold here as 'perennial basil' as it is more frost tolerant, but it still succumbs. My garden one died, but the cuttings in the shadehouse have made it thru winter.

Can you freeze parsley like you do basil, by putting it in a ziplock bag.
TIA
Colleen

Sure you can freeze parsley - I use a small jar rather than a ziplock bag, but assume the baggie would work fine. I usually wash it first, then remove the water thoroughly (I spin it in a salad spinner then finish by patting dry with towels), pulse it a few times in the food processor until it's chopped very fine but not actually pureed, then pack it firmly into small jars and freeze.

If there was no water on it when you froze it, it will be easy to scoop out the amount you want when frozen. If water was still on it when you froze it, or if after it has been frozen you let it sit on the counter and thaw then re-freeze it, it will freeze more solid and when you want to use it you may need to scrape at it to loosen it up. In that case, a baggie might not work as well as a jar. On the other hand, it might work better - maybe you could break it up by mashing the baggied around in your hands.

At any rate, freezing works well, and the taste is far superior (my opinion) to dried parsley.

How does the flavor of home-dried basil compare to fresh or frozen?

As others said above, dried basil has significantly less punch than fresh basil which is why you do not see it commonly available as a dried herb in the spice section of your local grocery. There is almost no comparison to fresh basil. It is better to make a basil infused oil. If you are going to freeze, try using dry ice instead of just the freezer. This preserves the cell structure and inherent qualities of the foilage better than a regular freezer would.

I read in a preserving cookbook to blanch your basil leaves in boiling water (3-5 seconds) then plunge into cold water. When I did this the leaves turned black, the book said they would be bright green!! Any suggestions?

A quick wilt in the microwave helps to get them to remain green color. I usually do this if I don't have a lot to dry. Either that, or it goes into my heydrator and dries to a green color. I crumble the dried leaves and place them in acanning jar and pull a vcauum on the jar. I do the same with dill weed and both have a long lasting flavor and smell. I think that if the blanch water is hard, it will cause the basil to discolor.

I make pesto (chopped basil, olive oil, chopped garlic, chopped nuts (preferably pine nuts) and grated parmesan cheese. And freeze in ice cube trays and then put cubes into a zip-loc bag and store in the freezer. I pour oil in my food blender, then stuff it with basil leaves and spin it - mixed with the oil like that, it does not turn black. A couple of cubes in mid-winter adds summer flavor to pasta and soups.