Questions for Cooks

[Antisocial_Worker]

Question 1: The Olive Oil Debacle

With fall fast approaching, my partner and I decided to go ahead and harvest all the basil we could from the plant we've had on our back patio since spring. We didn't quite know what to do with all of the basil though, and I looked into it. I found a site that suggested preserving it in olive oil. You layer the leaves, salt them, pour in the olive oil, and then put the whole thing in the refrigerator. Scoop out the leaves as needed, and as an added bonus, you also get basil-infused olive oil!

We tried it. The whole mess congealed into an very unappealing glob. Is this normal? I know nothing of the habits of olive oil, and therefore do not know how it should behave when in the refrigerator, or even if it should be put in the refrigerator at all.

What say you?

Question 2: The Life and Times of Habanero Peppers

When we were harvesting the basil, we also decided to pick all the habanero peppers we had growing back there. I looked up how to dry them in the oven, and did so. Then I left them in the oven and forgot about them for a week, until I picked off a few more peppers and went to dry those too. The original batch of peppers had gotten a bit rubbery from reabsorbed moisture, and had turned a dark, dark red, almost black, in the week they'd been lying the oven, cold and alone and forlorn. After another six hours at low heat, both the new and old peppers were crispy again, and I took the whole batch out and sealed them in Tupperware.

My question is this: Will the old peppers be good to use? Will they be safe to use?

[Kittish]

Question 1- yes, olive oil will turn solid in the fridge. Let it sit at room temperature for a while (or drop it into a warmed pan) and the oil will quickly return to a liquid state. As to whether you SHOULD keep this in the fridge or not, I'd opt for mostly yes. It doesn't seem to hurt the oil, and the leaves might turn all icky at room temp, which would ruin the whole thing (I keep homemade Italian salad dressing in the fridge). If you need to pull out just a few leaves, lift up the top layer of oil and peel them out. ETA: The basil flavor will still work its way through the olive oil, just perhaps more slowly than it would at room temperature.

Question 2- I don't know.

[Antisocial_Worker]

Thanks very much, Kittish. Much appreciated.

[Seshat]

Another way to preserve both herbs and vegetables is to put them in vinegar; and you get both pickled herbs/veggies and flavoured vinegar. This doesn't need refrigeration: vinegar is a natural preservative.
What I would do, however, is find a reliable food-safety site and study up on the most modern recommendations for home-kitchen pickling techniques. I suspect that there are now more effective/reliable ways of sterilising bottles and jars than boiling them, for example.

[MoonCat]

I would've tried cutting open one of the peppers first to make sure it hadn't gotten moldy inside. Other than that I'm not sure. You might want to Google a food safety site and see if there's any info on that.

[Antisocial_Worker]

I would've tried cutting open one of the peppers first to make sure it hadn't gotten moldy inside. Other than that I'm not sure. You might want to Google a food safety site and see if there's any info on that.

To dry them, i'd already cut each pepper in half. No signs of mold... they just reabsorbed some moisture from the air while they were sitting in the oven. After the old peppers went through with the new ones, they're all uniformly crispy and crumbly. The old ones are just a different color.

[Food Lady]

In the research I've done on preserving things in oil, I've always seen instruction to keep at room temperature. But those instructions were for dried herbs. Maybe your instructions said to refrigerate it because the basil leaves were fresh, not dried. My recommendation is that if you do this again, hang the leaves up to dry for a week or so, and then put in a sterilized, dry jar with oil on a shelf. As for the peppers, I have no idea.

[Jester]

Hell, why not experiment? Take a bit of olive oil and basil leaves and stick them in two different small containers. (I suggest small portions for experimenting because olive oil isn't exactly cheap.) Put one in the fridge, leave the other one out. Check back with them over a few weeks. See which is preferable. What the pros and cons of each are. And then, of course, report back to us on your findings.

[Barracuda]

Meat or dairy I would worry about, but since your peppers are veggies, as long as there is no mold or fungus they should be just fine. Veggies don't develop bacteria like other foods can. As for the basil, another option would be to dry the leaves in a dehydrator if you have one, or find a way to dry them naturally, then crumble them into a powder and place them in a sealed container. You can then sprinkle them on food.

[bhskittykatt]

Personally if there's no mold I would go for the peppers. I have a hunch that capsaicin is a nice natural preservative.

And you should do habanero infused olive oil. Just sayin'. I've never tried it, but I've tried other varieties of chili-infused olive oils and they are da bomb!

[Antisocial_Worker]

And you should do habanero infused olive oil. Just sayin'. I've never tried it, but I've tried other varieties of chili-infused olive oils and they are da bomb!

Partner actually went out and bought a bottle of jalapeno olive oil today. Supposedly it makes good popcorn, but when he brought it home he started talking about frying shrimp in it, and he just got this... look... on his face.

Peppers are still in Tupperware. The problem with gourmet dreams and aspirations is that they frequently run up against the fact that I work two jobs, go to school full-time, and have a junior internship to deal with. I barely have time to eat, let alone cook these days, and it blows. That's how I ended up leaving the peppers in the oven for a week in the first place.

[Gravekeeper]

I would toss the peppers frankly as well as any other peppers they came in contact with.

Vegetables are not magically immune to bacteria ( Botulism has spores too you know ) and develop bacteria just like anything else. Especially low ph veggies like peppers. Those have been sitting out at room temperature for way waaay to long.

The same actually goes for your basil oil. The reason the recipe said to refrigerate it is because herbs or veggies in oil is the perfect environment for growing botulism. Its a anaerobic environment ( no oxygen ) with a food source ( herbs / veggies ) and a low ph. So do NOT fark around leaving it out at room temperature to test the flavour difference.

Commercially prepared herb oils have a nice big production facility specifically designed to sterilize everything to ensure a botulism free product. You do not have said facility in your kitchen. >.>

[Jarlaxle]

Hot peppers are oily...natural preservative.

[lordlundar]

We tried it. The whole mess congealed into an very unappealing glob. Is this normal? I know nothing of the habits of olive oil, and therefore do not know how it should behave when in the refrigerator, or even if it should be put in the refrigerator at all.

No, putting it in the fridge is probably the worst thing to do. Not only will the oil congeal (as you have already discovered) fresh basil does NOT like the cold. Basil will go into a very ugly black colour in a short period of time almost like a banana that has spoiled. At that point the basil is beyond all hope as the volatile oils will have degraded almost completely.

Best way to store olive oil is to put it in a tightly sealed, dark container and put it in an infrequently opened cabinet. Olive oil is particularly photosensitive and will go rancid when exposed to bright light. It's why you should never buy olive oil that's stored in a clear glass bottle on the shelf. It probably went rancid long ago.

[Gravekeeper]

No, putting it in the fridge is probably the worst thing to do. Not only will the oil congeal (as you have already discovered) fresh basil does NOT like the cold.

Actually, the worst thing you can do is NOT put it in the fridge in this case. If fresh herbs are involved it should be refrigerated because of bacteria. Its kind of a no win scenario. This is why you should be infusing with dried herbs to begin with honestly.

Moisture ( Water in fresh herbs, garlic, veggies, etc ) + Food Source ( Herbs, veggies, etc ) + No oxygen environment ( Oil ) = Yay botulism!

So you either need to be using dried ingredients for infusing or you need to refrigerate or you need to be heat infusing to kill the nasties. Otherwise you risk bacteria and/or shitty taste results. -.-

Hot peppers are oily...natural preservative.

No, oil is not a preservative. All oil does is create an anaerobic ( no oxygen ) environment. This prevents some types of bacteria and degradation but promotes others ( like bacteria that benefit from a no oxygen environment such as botulism ). Basically, oil can only preserve something that has already been sterilized.

Acid and salt are the natural preservatives, not oil. This is why practically any processed or packaged food has acid and/or salt in it such as lactic/citric/sorbic acid or one of many things that include the term sodium.