I have a very healthy pot of French Thyme growing and need to use more than we are picking right now. Instead of freezing it with butter or in ice cube trays, I dried some.
This is very easy to do, requires minimal work on your part and yields some nice dry thyme leaves for nothing as opposed to buying the French Thyme at the store, which rarely has the French Thyme type dried.
No recipe, just directions needed, pick your thyme in the morning, after the dew has dried off. Rinse if dusty and dry carefully. If it is wet it could mold. Spread the thyme out on paper towels on wire racks and cover with cheese cloth or more paper towels. I have done it both ways.
After two to three days, check for dryness. It should be easy to get the dry leaves off of the stems. If not dry enough, just recover and let dry another day or two.
When dry, strip from the stems and store in a glass jar with a good lid on it. It should keep until you are ready to pick fresh again another year. This is a passive way of drying herbs with not much work. The herbs with more moisture in the leaves are not a good candidate for this type of drying.
You can also try tying it in bunches and hanging to dry, though I have not had a lot of success with doing that. There is also drying it in your oven if you have a gas oven, the pilot light should be enough to dry it overnight. Again, I burnt some this way and the flavor is not as good as the air dried.
Thyme is a perennial and I am going to leave it in the pot this fall and see how it does over winter.
Try your dried thyme in these recipes:
I hang mine to dry in bunches. The trick is to make sure the plants are dry from the washing before bunching them up. I will rinse mine, lay it out on a towel like you do. Once the surface water has evaporated off I then bunch it up and hang to dry. I use this process for Thyme(German and Lemon), Oregano, Mint, and Lemon Balm. If you want something good, take a sprig or two of Lemon Thyme and put it in your Sun Tea while it steeps. Lemon Tea without paying for lemon juice.
ReplyDeleteI might have to try it again. Do you put it in a paper bag to keep the dust off? I have not tried growing Lemon Thyme. What else do you use it in?
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