Parsley adds great flavor and color to many dishes. But which is better – frozen chopped parsley or the fresh ingredient? Let’s look at both options to help you decide what works best in your kitchen, whether you’re making a quick weeknight dinner or adding the final flavorful flourish to something fancier – and with Dorot Gardens all it takes is a quick ‘pop, drop, done’.

The Case For Fresh Parsley 

Fresh parsley is a common ingredient in many kitchens. It has a bright flavor and crunchy texture. When you use fresh herbs in your recipes, you get the strongest taste and smell. We’ll go into a more complete nutritional breakdown below, but in brief, parsley is full of things that are good for you, like vitamins A, C, and K, and minerals like iron and potassium. The bright green leaves make food look great too and give a clean, slightly peppery taste that works well in many different cuisines.

Fresh parsley is good for more than just taste, though. It also contains antioxidants that help protect your body and your health, including flavonoids and vitamin C. Parsley can also help with digestion and the chlorophyll that makes it green also helps to fight bad breath. When you choose fresh herbs for your cooking, you get to enjoy everything about them – the bright green color, the crisp feel, and the special smell that can make any dish taste better.

The Case for Frozen Chopped Parsley

So, now that we’ve seen the areas in which fresh parsley looks to have an advantage, let’s now take a look at the option of frozen chopped parsley, and where it may have an edge over the fresh ingredient.

Convenience & Quality

While fresh parsley is great, frozen chopped parsley is the handier solution for modern kitchens. With Dorot Gardens frozen chopped parsley (and our other herb and spice cubes) however, you really get the best of both worlds. Because our parsley cubes are picked, prepared and flash-frozen as quickly as possible, all of the natural benefits of fresh parsley are sealed within the cube – ready and waiting to go into your dish with a simple ‘pop, drop, done’. So, when you use frozen chopped parsley, you’re using a modern way to add a great, flavourful ingredient to your cooking, saving time, and doing both without losing quality, or the benefits of fresh parsley.

Cost-Effectiveness and Sustainability

Using the fresh ingredient can be a great option if you use it quickly enough, but all too often it goes to waste as you don’t manage to use it all before it wilts. This can mean buying parsley more often than you use it to make sure you always have some, an approach that inevitably leads to waste. That’s how Dorot Gardens frozen chopped parsley cubes can save you money in the long run – you only use what you need when you need it, and the rest stays fresh in the freezer for later. This can save you a lot of money over time, especially over the two-year lifespan of our products!

Culinary Applications: Fresh vs. Frozen

Both fresh and frozen parsley are useful in cooking, but they’re best for different things. Fresh parsley is great when you want to see and feel the herb in your food. It’s perfect for sprinkling on top of dishes, adding to salads, or using in recipes where parsley is really important, like in tabbouleh or chimichurri sauce. The crisp texture and bright green color is unmistakable in these dishes.

Frozen chopped parsley works well as an accompanying ingredient in recipes. It’s great for adding to soups, stews, sauces, marinades, things like that. The frozen cubes melt easily into hot dishes, spreading that distinctive parsley flavor all through the food. When you explore recipes using frozen herbs, you’ll see they’re especially good for dishes that cook for a long time. The frozen parsley holds up well during long cooking, slowly releasing its flavor throughout the dish. This makes it a great choice for slow-cooked meals, braised meats, and hearty vegetable stews. Frozen parsley is also good for baked goods that need herbs, like savory breads or pastries incorporating herbs, where the texture of parsley isn’t as important.

Nutritional Comparison

Both fresh and frozen parsley are healthy choices. As mentioned above parsley has lots of vitamin C, which can start to decrease after it’s picked. But the quick freezing used to create Dorot Gardens frozen chopped parsley helps keep that process at bay. As a result, our frozen parsley keeps most of its nutritional value because of how it’s frozen. This means you’re still getting good amounts of vitamins A, C, and K when you eat it, as well as important minerals like iron and potassium.Another good thing about our frozen parsley is that its nutrition stays the same over time. Unlike the fresh equivalent, which can lose nutritional value as it sits in your fridge, frozen parsley keeps its nutritional value for months. This means you can enjoy the health benefits of parsley all year round, no matter the time of year. The quick freezing process we use “locks in” the nutrients, so even if you’re using our parsley months after buying it is still full of vitamins and minerals. This is helpful if you count on parsley as a regular source of certain nutrients in your diet.