Prep for the Winter: Oven-Drying Your Own Fresh Herbs!

Sadly, the bountiful spring and summer fruit & veggie season has come to an end, but luckily the fall brings another crop of amazingness! The crisp apples, versatile yams, onions at their peak, and who could forget pumpkins?

To prepare for the changing seasons, my hubby so helpfully snipped & brought in an abundance of fresh herbs from our herb garden. They were really growing out of control (in a good way), and seemed to be hanging on to life- a perfect time to snip and reap the benefits of these puppies for the winter!

Drying your fresh herbs to use all winter long is not only a great way to prevent wasting the herbs, but also facilitates creativity and continued fun in the kitchen! This winter I need to make sure I got my grip on fun in the kitchen:)

Here is what I've tried so far for Oven-Drying my fresh herbs...I used this method thus far for fresh Rosemary, Oregano & Sage...

Directions:
Printable Recipe

1. Pre-heat your oven to 150-200 degrees.


2. Wash your herbs with cold, running water to remove any dirt, bugs, dust or other yuckies. Spread the clean herbs out on clean kitchen towels, blot with paper towel and let the herbs air-dry for 20 minutes or so. (Herbs need to be totally dry before you place in the oven)


3. Use your fingers to strip the leaves from the stems and spread the leaves out on a baking sheet prepared with a piece of parchment paper.


4. Bake the herbs for about 15 minutes, with the oven door cracked open.


5. Test the herbs for dryness; take a few leaves and crush them with your fingers-a.) if they crumble very easily then the herbs are done! or b.) if the leaves do NOT crumble very easily, hence there is still some moisture within the leaves, bake for 2-3 more minutes, test again...until the herbs crumble easily...(see video)...

6. Continue to crush the dried herbs and store in a tightly sealed container! Enjoy!

You Could Also Try...

• I washed and dried some old dried herb containers, labeled them correctly with their new contents and filled them with MY dried herbs!
• You could also use small ziplock-type containers for storage!