How to Dry Herbs

You don't have to have a dehydrator to dry herbs.  I've stumbled onto a method you can use to dry them that requires no special equipment.  I discovered this quite by accident several years ago when I had a lot of basil I had harvested and planned to make pesto with.  Something came up and I didn't have time.  So, I ended up just laying it out on newspapers in our dining room.  Every time I passed by, I picked some of it up and turned it over.  After a week or so, I had some nicely dried basil that was better than I could buy in the store.


The following sequence of pictures shows how I used this method recently to dry Oregano.  First of all, here is what Oregano looks like growing in my herb garden.

I harvest it with scissors, cutting the stems about 3 to 4 inches long.  Here is a bunch I just harvested for the Farmers' Market.  I divide it out into sandwich bags for sale.  Then if I have any leftover, I dry it.

So, the first thing you do is strip the leaves off the stems, like this:

Strip off enough leaves to cover a paper towel one layer deep.  Cover the leaves with another paper towel and leave them out on your kitchen counter or somewhere that it will be convenient for you to "fluff" them every day.  By fluff, I mean to gently turn them over.  It needs to be done at least once a day and more often if you can manage it.  After 2 to 3 days, you will notice the leaves beginning to dry.  After about a week, they will be fairly dry, but not brittle.

At this point, you can put them in a plastic sandwich bag for storage or you can go ahead and grind them up.  You can crush them between your fingers or use a mortar and pestle.  However, I like to use a coffee grinder.  You probably would not want to use the same one you use to grind coffee, unless you want herb flavored coffee!  In our case, we have a coffee grinder we bought years ago, but never really used much for grinding coffee.  So, I commandeered it for grinding herbs instead.


I fill it full of dried leaves.  It doesn't hold much, so I have to process them in several batches.  

 Then, I put them in a plastic bottle that I saved from Oregano that I bought one time.

Ready to use for spaghetti, pizza or any other recipe that calls for Oregano.