Drying herbs – a first for us

Tom and Heather are here for 2 weeks working on their house so Heather and I raided her herb garden and my pot of herbs (given to me by Sheila) and decided to try to dry them and continue to use them over the winter.

We had chives, parsley (2 types – curly and flat leafed), oregano, mint (way too much mint!!!), two types of sage(regular and pineapple) and thyme. We used the oven drying method and laid the herbs in a single layer on cookie trays and put them into a 170 degree oven for 1-2 hours. In the end we had enough dried herbs for each of us to last the whole winter at least. They smell great which tells me that lots of my current herbs may just be really, really out of date. The parsley even retained its nice green colour.  Heather has so much mint that we did two methods and dried some in the oven and then each of us hung a bunch to dry naturally. We hung the bunches Tuesday and mine is just dried now.  I have no idea what I will do with all the mint but obviously time to look at making mint sauce and buying some lamb to go with it!!

Freshly picked ready to go
Freshly picked ready to go
Readied for the oven
Readied for the oven

 

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