A trick to harvest and dry your own Herbs!
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OK people, here's a handy little trick to help you harvest and dry your own herbs. At this time of year many people have gardens that are just about pooping out (except those of us in warmer climates) and this little method will become a benefit to your cooking all through the winter.
You'll need: paper grocery bags, parchment paper, scissors, and an oven capable of only heating to 120 degrees (prefferably convection but you can manage with another by reading below)
1) Cut your grocery bag so that when open, it will only stand about 3 or four inches high.
2) Stand the bag up in a 8 x 12 metal pan temporarily for support
4) Cut parchment paper to go inside the bag sitting on the bottom and curling up the sides.
5) Take your trusty scissors go outside and start snipping but only choose one type of herb like rosemary, dill, oregano, basil, etc at a time. Note, do not wash these cuz you want want them swimming in water. If you must, then use a salad spinner to make sure you get all the water off them.
6) Place the loaded bag into the oven narrow-ways facing out so you can repeat and fit another right next to it.. With two shelves you can get four bags in at one time.
7) Allow the herbs to dehydrate for about three hours. Running at that low a temperature will be very inexpensive on the electric bill so don't panic.
Notes: if you don't have a convection oven, here's a sneaky trick. Go to your local dollar store and look for the cheap, crummy, dinky, little electric desk fans that you're going to sit on the bottom of the oven (away from the hot element silly) but plug in to create air movement in the oven while the herbs are drying. Since you're only heating to 120 degrees you don't have to worry about anything melting or bursting into flames.
The benefit of this method is that it will allow you to harvest a huge amount of herbs compared to buying one of those hinky and espensive food dehydrators which can probably only hold about as much as one single bag. Since the bag sits freely on the shelf the moisture will naturally leave the herbs and/or flowers (yeah I do this with rose petals too and boy does the house smell awesome)
After your items are all dried, dump them out into a colander and crunch them up separating out the stems and stiff parts and all the small stuff that remains can be stored in whatever gizmo you have hanging around that's airtight like old canning jars, or other thingys you'd normally toss into the recycling bin. Put a sticky label on it with the date and the herb name and Woo Hooo.. each time you cook you'll get a warm feeling knowing you harvested these little treasures all by yourself. Ohhh and don't forget to snag some more garden goodies from your friends and relatives too. If your really cleaver, you can wrap one of your containers and give them away as yule gifts later on.
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Posted By OaklawnM4M - Rick Wagner to
MysticWays.com Store News at 10/19/2009 02:15:00 PM
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