How To Freeze Fresh Chives The Easy Way

Here’s all you need to know about freezing chives. Learn how to freeze chives, how to thaw them, and how to use them after defrosting.

Say you’ve bought a bunch of chives, used a few stalks, and aren’t sure what to do with the rest. That’s when you ask: can you freeze fresh chives?

Or maybe you got a few bunches from the farmer’s market and want to preserve them for longer.

Either way, freezing is the best solution here, and that’s what we’ll discuss in this article.

Here’s what we cover below:

• how freezing affects chives, i.e., the pros and cons of doing it
• the easiest way to freeze chives (I’m not going to suggest making chive butter or pre-freezing the herb on a cookie sheet)
• using frozen chives

If that’s what you’re looking for, read on!

Can You Freeze Chives?

You can freeze chives, and the only downside is that they lose their crispness, and the flavor and smell are slightly muted after thawing. Unless the recipe depends on chives to be crisp, that’s usually not an issue.

While many veggies don’t freeze particularly well or require a bit of extra prep, most herbs don’t belong to either of these groups. Quite on the contrary: freezing fresh dill, chives, or parsley, is quick and simple.

The only downside, as I already mentioned, is that the herb is soft and mushy after thawing and doesn’t taste as good as a fresh one.

(The same happens to frozen and thawed celery.)

In many cooking scenarios (e.g., when adding chives to scrambled eggs, or mixing with cream cheese and grated radishes), however, you can hardly notice any difference.

Overall, chives don’t last long, so freezing is the best solution if you have too much on hand.

Using Frozen Chives

Frozen chopped chives thaw in a matter of minutes. But in most cases, there’s no need to do that anyway. Usually, you can grab a teaspoon and add the amount you need to whatever you’re cooking.

But if you really need to thaw chives first, transfer them onto a plate and leave them on the counter for 10 minutes. It should get the job done.

When it comes to recipes that you can use frozen chives in, you can add them to pretty much anything as long as the dish doesn’t depend on the chives’ texture. That means you can still use them when making chive butter if that’s your thing.

As I mentioned earlier, if you’re not sure if somewhat mushy chives will work in your recipe, give a small amount a test drive. If things go south, well, at least now you know that.