This is a very old-school Québécois way to preserve herbs, onions, carrots… really any manner of aromatic vegetable.  They are chopped finely, mixed with salt, left in the fridge for a week, then transferred to a jar.  That’s it.

Ingredients.  It would be silly to offer a “recipe” as such for herbes salées.  You shouldn’t go to a grocery store and buy a set of ingredients; you should use whatever you have in abundance in your herb garden in the late season.  There are, however, some useful ratios to keep in mind.

1 part salt for every 3 parts aromatics, by weight.  In other words 33 g of salt for every 100 g of herb mix.

In terms of balancing the flavours of the onions, carrots, and herbs, I offer this as a general guideline:

4 parts allium : 2 parts parsley : 1 part carrot : 2 parts other aromatic herbs

For allium, I use tender varieties like green onions, leeks, and chives, chopped finely.

We got an overwhelming crop of curly-leaf parsley this year.  Since it doesn’t dry particularly well, we used lots in our salted herbs.

I grate the carrots finely with a box-grater.

As far as aromatic herbs go, you can use everything under the sun.  Fines herbes are the most common (chervil, parsley, tarragon…).  I took my salted herbs in more of a “poultry mix” direction, using sage, parsley, thyme, and rosemary.

Procedure.  Lay alternating layers of the chopped herbs and salt in a casserole.  Refrigerate.  Depending on what types of allium and herbs you use, a brine might form.

After one week, pour the mix into jars and store in the fridge for use throughout the winter.

Applications.  The first way we used the salted herbs was in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.  Other traditional applications include soup and pâté, just remember that when you add salted herbs, you are adding salt (ahem) as well as herbs.  Adjust salt content accordingly.