Kitchen Tips: Using Herbs - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Let me give you some hints about using fresh and dried herbs. Dried herbs are great. They last in your cabinet for up to six months or so. They are great in sauces. The key about dried spices though, and herbs, is that you want to make sure that these spices do not go bad on you. If they lose their color, or they lose their volatile oils, they are useless, and they are expensive to buy. So you want to buy in small containers when possible, and you want to buy them from a reputable company. If you put them into your fingers or put them in the palm of your hand and squeeze, and if you cannot smell that wonderful French thyme, then you just want to toss it out. It is good to store these in a cool, dark place, not near any heat sources. So that is for the dried herbs. Fresh herbs: I go to the farmer's market and I will buy a whole array of herbs that will last for the week. What you want to do then is you want to take your big bunch of cilantro, you are going to shake it into a big bowl of ice cold water, and what will happen is all that dirt that is collected on these leaves is going to filter to the bottom. Then you are going to lie out a piece of damp paper towel, and you are going to roll it up tightly like this, and it is going to get stored into the bag it came in, so you are not wasting a bag. It goes into this bag, and that will get stored in your refrigerator, and these will stay fresh three to four days, sometimes a week worth of time. So all week long you can be planning your recipes around what fresh herbs you bought at the farmer's market that weekend. But another thing you can do is you can put basil in a glass. This is a bunch of basil I bought several days ago, and if you put it in a glass of cold water, put this bag over the top, and put it in your refrigerator, these basil leaves will stay fresh, firm and delicious for any recipe up to a week. So you spend a lot of money on herbs and you want to know how to preserve them and keep them fresh and delicious as long as you can. These are my tips on fresh herbs.