After read this post and try several ways to drying herbs at
your own home, you will never buy drying one again, because it’s easier than
you think this whole time.
There’s many type on how to preserve the food to preventing
decay like freezing or canning the food, or even processing it to become
another raw food like curing meat, making cheese and yogurt from milk. Perhaps
dehydrating is still the easier way to preserve the herbs because most of the
herbs already contain less moisture than another vegetable so you can dry it
fast.
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Basics Steps Drying Herbs.
The main profit from drying herbs are they became safe from
bacteria, mold or yeast and will kept the potent of a herbs for at least 12
month ahead. Air circulation and some warmth are the main key to drying it,
below are the most used way to dry it.
For some people washing herbs before process are important
steps, especially if you bought the herbs from market and not grown it
yourself.
1. Drying Herbs Indoor.
Tie a bundle of herbs and put them upside down inside paper
bag with some hole around, used tie twist so you can easily tighten the herbs
because those herbs will shrink when they dry, and do not forget to tie the
paper bag, now just look for some warm and dry spot over your house to start
drying herbs, the process can take hours or even daily depend on how much
moisture inside the herbs.
2. Drying Herbs with Sunlight.
IT easy if you live in a warm and dry place where the sun
are available most of the day, you can used the heat of the sun to dry the
herb, but remember to not exposed them directly at sunlight to preventing the
herbs get bleaching. You can make a drying screen from a window like media and
put some net around it. Or you can build your own solar dehydrator.
3. Dehydrating Herbs with a Machine.
If you have a dehydrator machine and it really save your
time and money are worth to used it, you can buy or build it yourself, several
type of the machine have temperature control and a fan inside it so you can
adjust the temperature and timers to match the herbs requirement to dry.
4. Oven Drying Herbs.
It sound easy because most of us are already used it on
daily activity, but actually it is not the efficient way because as you already
know that most oven working temperature are more than 100 degrees but herbs are
need to be dried at 100 degree Celsius maximum, also herbs drying process
require air circulation and most oven do not have vent. If you insist on using
oven to do it you need thermometer and a lot of experiment to match the
requirement of the herb.
5. Refrigerator Drying Herbs.
You can used refrigerator to drying your herbs stock, just
put them in the fridge for a few days, this tips was discovered by Madalene Hill
and Gwen Barclay (daughter) by accident. The herb will dry in beautifully crisp
and also not changing the color, flavor and fragrance.
That’s all 5 Way to Drying Herbs at home, you can choose a
few way that suit you the most.
