How to Dry Herbs
I recently found myself with way more fresh parsley, cilanto and dill than I could possibly use. There is nothing that I hate more than to throw away good, healthy food, so I decided to dry them. I use this food dehydator which is great. Learning how to dry herbs using a dehydrator can really save you a lot of money as it can prevent a lot of waste. I will talk about other uses below.
Here are the steps to do this.
1. Wash the herbs.
2. Remove the long stems.
3. Place the herbs on the food dehydrator trays in a single layer. Do not place them on top of each other or it will take too long to dry out.
How to Dry Herbs – Dehydrator Trays
4. Set the food dehydrator to 110 degrees.
5. Dehydrate them in there until they are dry. It will take around 10 hours.
6. When dry, crumple the herbs, and place in a glass container. Make sure they are completely dry; otherwise mold could form once you put them in the container. If you any leftover glass containers from herbs that you used up, these are perfect.
You can do this whenever you buy too many herbs, or if you have a garden, you can dehydrate them at the end of the season so you will have organic herbs throughout the winter.
If you grow herbs such as peppermint, spearmint, chamomile, or lavender, you can dry these out the same way and use as a tea. You could also dehydrate rose petals and add them to a tea as long as you are not using any pesticides on them.
If you grow catnip, you can dry that out as well so your cat will have organic catnip throughout the winter. You can also dehydrate flowers to use in potpourri or dried flower arrangements. You can also make dried fruit, dried vegetables and jerky in a food dehydrator.
If you do not have a food dehydrator, it is possible that this would work in a conventional oven. I do not know for sure if it would work as I have only done it in a food dehydrator. You could try setting it to the lowest possible heat setting. It would most likely take several hours. You would have to keep checking it. If you try it and it works, please post below.
