How to Dry Your Herbs

Generally you will cut a bundle of stems and leaves, wash off any dirt, dry with paper towels so there is no moisture to form mold, tie the stems with leaves together and hang in a dark, dry airy room about two weeks or until the leaves are dry. Then strip the leaves and store in the herb bottles. If your herbs have no dirt or fungicide on them such as copper sulphate, just put them in the paper dry bags and let them dry.

You can also carefully harvest the leaves or sprigs to avoid getting any dirt on them. Then put them in a brown paper lunch bag sack. Fold over the top and put in a dry room away from light for a couple of days to a week. Every two days shake the sack a bit to ensure the herbs dry evenly. (Tip from Tia at Tagawa Gardens)

From personal experience, the brown paper sack method works great. Just be sure shut out light and shake them up every two to three days.

An alternative way is to spread out the sprigs of cut herbs on a cookie sheet and dry in the oven at 85 to 95 degrees for about 15 minutes. You might also try the top tray of a broiler pan as your drying pan since it has holes for warm air to circulate.

The main thing in using the oven is to not get the temperature too high as it will damage the leaves and reduce the flavor and color. CAUTION: Watch your temperature and the herbs carefully. Dry herbs will burn. See Microwave Test below. When dry store the leaves in airtight opaque jars. As you use the herbs replace the empty space with cotton to reduce the amount of air reaching your remaining herbs.

I read you can also quick dry herbs in your microwave. Caution: microwaves vary greatly in power with most of the newer ones ranging from 1,000 watts to 1,400 watts or more.

Here are results of my trial run with one sprig of fresh parsley in a 1,000 watt microwave. At 20 second time on high power, the parsley main stem caught fire in 5 seconds. Starting with a second sprig, I cut off the stem just below the leaves, used a 15 second time and the number 1 power setting. After 15 seconds, the leaves were almost dry. Another 15 seconds at the number 1 power setting and the bottom end of the sprig was a small explosive flash fire. But the leaves did get dry. CONCLUSION: DRYING HERBS IN A MICROWAVE IS TOO BIG A FIRE HAZARD. DON’T DO IT.