How To Dry Herbs
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by Paige Russell

Have you ever bought a bunch of fresh herbs for a
recipe and then been faced with leftover sprigs. You
tell yourself that you will use them, because they are
so fresh and beautiful – but two weeks later you pull
them out of the fridge, forgotten, limp and unusable?

Well, not to worry. I have a very simple solution to
ease your conscience and keep your dinner plates
rich in flavor.

Drying/Dehydrating is the oldest form of food
preservation. And air-drying herbs is the easiest form
of this preservation technique. In this instructable, I'll
show you how to best dry and preserve extra herb bounty!
Step 1: Safe Home Food Preservation
This recipe is a project that I made to go with my
Instructables Canning & Preserving Class. I will not
be going over all the safety ins and outs of drying and
dehydrating for food perservation in this instructable,
so I highly recommend that you read through Lessons
1 & 6 of my class before you give this a go!

Step 2: Supplies

Optional:

Step 3: Drying Hearty Herbs

If you're harvesting your own herbs to dry, it's best to pick them on the morning you plan to hang them, after the

dew has dried. This will help prevent wilting. If you're buying herbs from the farmers market, handle them gently

and keep them in water like cut flowers until you're ready to prepare them for drying.

 

Remove any dirt and dark, crushed, or otherwise unappealing leaves. Wash the remaining leaf filled stems

carefully and lay them out on paper towel or a clean kitchen towel to air dry.

 

Herbs that do best with air drying in small bunches are the following less tender varietals:

 

Divide them into small bunches and either wrap the bundle ends in butcher's twine for hanging, or use a rubber
band to secure them. I prefer the twine because the dangling length offers more options for ways to hang the
bunches.
NOTE: It's important the bunches are small otherwise, the moisture can get trapped near where the ends come
together and cause mold to grow.
The herbs retain the best color and flavor if they are dried in a well ventilated indoor area that is out of direct
sunlight. I like to use clothespins to hang them from a suspended dowel, but you can really hang them from
anything as long as it's in an appropriate location.
Step 4: Drying Tender Herbs

The following tender leaf herbs have a higher moisture content and benefit from being dried inside paper bags

with holes cut out of them for air flow. (The bag absorbs some of that extra moisture.):

 

 

Here's how to prepare a bag for drying herbs in:

Cut down a standard paper lunch bag so that it's slightly shorter than the herb bundle it will envelope.
Use scissors or a hole punch to cut holes in the bag for air flow, making sure to put one in the center of the bottom
of the bag for the string and herb stems to go through.

Like so!
String the end of the twine up through the hole in the bottom of the bag and pull the herb bunch up until the stem ends poke though.
It is now ready to be hung and dried in a well ventilated indoor area that is out of direct sunlight. Depending on the humidity in your house, air drying herbs should take anywhere from 4-7 days.
Step 5: How to Tell When They're Completely Dry

Herbs dried either way are ready to be put in storage
containers when they are crispy dry and crumble
easily when crushed between your thumb and
forefinger.
Beautiful dried herbs!

NOTE: Another way to dry larger leaved herbs like mint, sage, and bay is to remove the individual leaves from the stems and lay them in single layers, without touching, on paper towel. Top with another paper towel and continue layering and stacking leaves and paper towels. You can go as high as five layers! Leave the stack in the (cold) oven overnight and the oven light of an electric or pilot light of a gas range is plenty warm to help these dry out quickly (but not too quickly).
Step 6: Storing Dried Herbs
Once the herb bunches are dry, remove the leaves by
running your (clean) thumbnail down the stem,
scraping off the leaves or picking the larger ones off
one by one.
Store the herbs in airtight containers (I love using
canning jars).
Label/date the freshly filled airtight containers and
store in a cool, dry, dark place like a cupboard or
pantry. As long as moisture doesn't get introduced
into the containers, the dried foods should last
indefinitely.

NOTE: Dried herbs are 3 - 4 times stronger than fresh
herbs, so when replacing fresh with dried in a recipe
that calls for fresh, add 1/4 to 1/3 the amount of dried herbs.
Step 7: To the Pantry and Beyond!

For more drying/dehydrating projects and to learn about other food preservation methods like:

 

 

Enroll in my free online Instructables Canning & Preserving Class!

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