The great thing about having a garden of fresh herbs is that all summer they are plentiful and available whenever you need them. Just a few snips can transform a recipe from bland to awesome. Then the fall arrives and the question becomes what to do with the herb plants. Haven't you always wondered how to dry herbs?
In the last few weeks, I have been drying the herbs that are still in the garden. It is really quite simple, but only works with certain types of herbs, the sturdier herbs, like rosemary, thyme, tarragon and parsley. In this post, I show how I dry thyme. In the above photo, I basically trimmed all the thyme off a few thyme plants. In the following photo, I arrange the thyme leaves on a microwavable plate and spread the stems around as evenly as possible.
I place the plate in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time and check on the progress.
In the above photo, you can see the leaves have become a little drier and brittle. This is where I stopped at about 1 1/2 minutes of microwave time.
I then removed the leaves from the stems and the leaves on the plate will become the herbs I can use through the winter (or however long they last). I will discard the stems in the photo to the right.
Storing is easy, just find a jar and place the dried herbs in there. Voila, the herbs are dried and ready to be used. In some recipes, I might chop them up finer or even use a coffee grinder. This will yield a more powdery spice like you would get in the grocery store spices.
What I love about these dried herbs is that when I open the jar the aroma is noticably stronger than store bought herbs/spices. I know exactly how fresh the herbs are because I dried them myself.
I hope you enjoyed this how to post. Thanks for stopping by!
Leave a Reply