How To Dry Herbs

Drying herbs is one of the many ways that you can make use of fresh herbs whether they’re ones that you may have bought from the store or ones that have been grown in a garden (yours or someone else's). If you dry your own herbs you can guarantee their freshness and prevent them from becoming stale or getting duty. This also allows you to make your own herb mixes, put together little jars of them as gifts, and have them on hand for use in creams, lotions, shampoos, conditions and the like. Using fresh, home grown herbs is a much better idea than using ones that have come in a bottle from the grocery store especially if you’ll be using them in lotions or shampoos. Its important to remember that anything we put on our skin is absorbed into our body. So any fertilizer, pesticide, or other chemicals that have been sprayed on or around the herbs or that are in the ground where they were grown is very much still in and on that herb. That means that when you cook with it and when you use such a herb in a mask or a shampoo that herb and all its chemicals immediately get absorbed into the skin. This is why it’s so important that you only use herbs that are organic or home grown so that you know exactly what has gone into them and you can make sure that you aren’t putting lots of chemicals or nasty stuff onto your skin or into your body.

First select the herbs that you want to dry and strip the fresh leave from the stems - this is the method you’ll be using for short stemmed herbs and any flower petals that you might want to dry. If the herb is a variety that has smaller leaves then leave them intact. The next thing you’ll want to do is find a place that has good circulation and doesn’t have any direct sunlight. Then get a clean window screen or some firm netting or mesh and lay our the leaves on the screen. Place the screen on top of a few bricks or blocks and make sure that it is secure - you don’t want all your herbs to get knocked to the ground or crushed by anything. Turn the leaves over periodically to make sure that they are each being rotated enough to dry completely and then remove them from the screen in seven to ten days. After you are sure that they are dried completely you can keep them it small plastic bags, film canisters, or little glass jars with labels on each of them so that you know what they all are. If you want to you can also break out a mortar and pestle and grind up your herbs in advance before placing them in your jars that way you’ll be sure to have them all ready to cook or make new lotions or soaps with.

If you’re using longer stemmed or more leafy herbs then it’s important that you make sure they’re picked in the morning so that the dew will have already dried off of them but they wont be brittle or dry from the heat. Then you’ll want to rinse them under some cold water to get any dirt off and shake off any excess water once you’re done. Pick off any dead or discolored leaves and then gather your herbs into small punches and secure them together with some rubber bands or some string. Then hang the bunches upside down in a warm, dark, and well ventilated area - but make sure that it isn’t dusty and it isn’t somewhere that the herbs will get crushed or knocked down. After two or three weeks the herbs will be dry and brittle and you’ll be able to strip the leaves from the stems and then you can grind them up or keep them whole and store them. Just like with your other herbs you can put them in little bags, canisters, or jars just as long as they are pretty air tight and wont let any pests get in or herbs leak out. Make sure that you label them all too as they are easy to confuse. Have fun drying your herbs out and enjoying them!