Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Folks,

I can only buy curry leaves* fresh, and at a store which is inconvenient to visit. I'm wondering what the best way to store leftover ones is; I tried freezing them once and they turned black and mushy. Drying kinda worked but they lost a lot of their flavor. Other ideas?

(*curry leaves are used in South Indian food by the handful as an aromatic)

I freeze them, but I freeze them very dry and still on the stem. I don't pack them at all. They dry out further in the freezer and lose potency quickly (which is why you seldom see dried karipatta), but you can eke another month or so out of them. Why don't you just get a plant?

JesBelle:

Too cold here; it would die in a week. I've tried.

If you have a foodsaver, that works great for freezing them. A friend gets some of mine when I trim it and foodsavers small packs - 8 or 12 per pack - and puts all the packs in a ziploc in the freezer. Maybe they dried out some between when I cut the branches and when she gets them foodsavered, but hers stay green, and don't turn black and mushy, like basil does.

I have also salt-layered curry leaves early on when growing it, since it seemed to stop growing entirely indoors. It is sort of dry, so it works well, as this method does with sage and epazote. And it is incredible how many leaves fit in a pint jar. They turn almost black, but keep the flavor much better than dried ones do.

I freeze mine too, like JesseBelle. When they start losing oomph, I just add a few more.

Mary

Edited to add: I also use them frozen.

Fuzzy,

I thought of you today when I cleaned out the salt-layered curry leaves I had stored since last fall, when I brought my tree in. The aroma is incredibly strong still, after almost 10 months. I hate wasting things like this, but I have been doing this with the leaves for many years, since the curry tree didn't really grow well indoors. But this year, it took off, so I didn't even use any of these, and I just found them in the back of my fridge! I thought I'd take a photo to show you how well they keep, and how many fit in a pint jar.



Now I am going to salt layer some epazote, that I just cut from the parking lot where my sister lives! Probably only a cup jar of that.

Dave,

You store the salt-layered leaves in the fridge?

Yes, and they last a LONG time, as you can see. And you wouldn't have to keep them that long, of course.