Hello all! Just recently we took our best shot at drying herbs for the first time. This was the first year that we grew any kind of herbs, so this was kind of new for us. The only one that we grew this year was cilantro. This is one that we can go through during the summer because we like eating a lot salsa. So, we were able to cut a little and set it aside for drying.
During this time of year our wood/cookstove is running just about all the time. So, we thought we would try to use all the heat to dry our herbs. What we did was that the cilantro was placed on glass plates and then they were placed in the warming oven on top of the stove. We left them up there for several hours, maybe about 4-to-6 hours, and by that time they crisp.
After the cilantro finished drying, the leaves were crushed down and stored in a small bottle for later use. Since this was more of an experiment, we did not yield much cilantro to store. This was more of a proof of concept for us and next year we will plant much more. We wanted to see if the heat from our woodstove was enough to thoroughly dry the cilantro and it seemed to work very well. If we had more to dry, we would have been able to a lot in a relatively small amount of time. I am looking forward to all the herbs we will be growing and drying next year!
Thanks for looking!
In drying herbs for studies we use air-drying.
Place bunch of them in paper bags and hang them inside a closed cabinet for days.
Phytochemicals and other organic components are not destroyed due to sunlight or heat
Hmm.. That is very interesting! I have never heard that before, but I will sure give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion!
I started dehydrating just this past year and have fallen in LOVE with it. I do herbs for my herbal tea drinks, jerky and one day I hope to make some fruit chews- not the leather like fruit roll-ups.. but tangerine and clementine candy like chews.
Those candy chews sound delicious! I will have to try that, but it sounds like you do a little bit of everything. We have been thinking about drying, or even canning our meat recently, because right know we just freeze it and it seems we never have enough space. As for the herbal teas, I am hoping to do some of that next year as well because we are wanting to be come as independent as possible from grocery stores and grow things our self. Sometimes, with all the different things going on, I am not sure we will get to do all of it next year, but we are going to try our best!
In regards to the herbal teas, I have a variety of herbs I use. From lemon balm, catnip, marjoram, mint, chamomile and feverfew- just to name a few. I'm sure I'll be adding more.I find such relief in some of my concoctions for stomach ailments, stress and anti-inflammatory.
great post! as you get more comfortable with herbs, look into making herb-infused sea salts. they're great for cooking AND baking, and are super easy gifts (or use them for bartering). do you like the seeds from cilantro plants? those store wonderfully & are delicious when mixed with peppercorns in a grinder.
i look forward to enjoying more of your homesteading adventures!
I will have to do some reading on the sea salts before I attempt making those, but I will definitely look into it! As for our cilantro, we put them out kind of late so they never got to the point of producing seeds, but they are really good mixed with pepper or in soups. Thanks for stopping by!
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Wow, thank you so much! I really appreciate it.
You're welcome!!
I love the idea of being able to utilise what is already there (the wood stove) to do things such as drying herbs. Such multi-purpose conveniences are a good step towards sustainability in a more eco-friendly way.
Knowing that next season you can expand your range of herbs to grow and transform (dry & store) must feel really exciting. :)
Thanks for your comment! Yes, it is very exciting for what next season has to come. We have lots of different varieties of vegetables and herbs that we are going to grow, so there is a lot of planning going on.
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