Anyemi Mohee (Welcome brother/sister)
How to dry herbs
Now you want to start using herbs more for food or medicine, but you don’t want it going off before you can even say ‘pim’! So how do you make it last? Well drying your herb properly can give you 1-2 years of use, so in this article I will go through the different ways of drying herbs, their pros and cons.
First things first, to make sure the drying works well you need to ensure the plant is as dry as possible before picking e.g. not after it has rained. Otherwise you would have gone out, spent all that time and before you can say ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ your plants are mouldy and unusable.
Talking of Mould, pick a healthy plant, no plants with disease or mould already on them- they don’t go away with the drying process. If the plant is really sick it aint gonna be of use to you, it’s trying to thrive itself and not doing well! I’ll talk about the art of foraging in another article.
So now, ways to dry your herbs in order of my favourites
1) Air Drying
It’s the cheapest method and the most traditional method of drying. All you need to do is to tie the herb into small bundles (too big and you risk air not getting to the innermost part of the bundle) and hang upside down in a warm, dry area out of direct sunlight. It is also important that the room is well ventilated like an airing cupboard. I’ve done it in my bedroom and it worked fine. The herbs will dry naturally within a week or two. The down sides are that it takes longer than other methods, and because it takes longer it doesn’t work well for plant material with a higher moisture content (more likely to mould before it dries). If you are drying something like flower petals, you have to hang it somewhere where the falling petals can be collected and not get in the way ( that is why an airing cupboard might be better than a bedroom for example). This however is still my favourite method of drying.
2) Dehydrator
A dehydrator is a machine that drys things well well! I have one of these and use it to dehydrate all sorts. It’s another relatively quick way to dry in comparison to no 1, and the temperatures are usually lower than the lowest setting on an oven (no 3) so you can dehydrate without burning. A lot of the machines come with instructions on the amount of time it takes to dehydrate particular items. For the higher moisture content plants it could be several hours of dehydrating but it gets the job done, but you don’t need to be sitting there watching it all the time.
3) Oven
Quite a few people have an oven at home, so this method is one that doesn’t require adding something else to the long wish list you have. Here you place the dried herb on parchment paper (in a single flat layer – makes for even drying) and place the oven on the lowest setting and let the herb dry. This is quicker than air drying and better for plants with high moisture content. It’s also great if you don’t have money to buy extra equipment, but it’s not one of my favourite methods as the lowest temperature of the oven could still burn the herb and therefore not so good for delicate herbs. It also uses a lot of energy.
4) Sun Drying
If it’s a particular sunny day you can dry your plants outside but this would be more for using the plants as decor. Traditionally I was taught by my grandma not to do sun drying as this will make the medicine weak. So it’s best to dry it in the shade where there is still airflow. However there are instances where the sun is great at making medicine, like sun-infused oils but considering that we are in the UK, the 2.5 days of sun a year might not be enough, so I find the other methods a little more reliable.
So have a go and let me know how well it went on my Instagram @Tsofanye.