Drying Basil & Rosemary : The Spice must Flow

We're having an amazing garden year.
I say "we" but that's a lie.  Eric is having an amazing garden year.  His green thumb gets greener all the time.
Among other items thriving this year are our spices: basil and rosemary.  We've got so much more than we could ever eat, and I've been putting basil in almost everything for weeks now.  Eric has mastered pesto, but for all of our plucking and pruning, our plants grow bigger and bigger.  So in an effort to waste not, we decided to dry out the spices and preserve them for future use.  Here's how we did it...


Go to the garden and cut chunks of your plants off.  Start from the top, and just snip away decent lengths - I did about 10" sections.  Wash them thoroughly, then use a salad spinner to remove excess moisture. Lay out to dry for a bit.

Fresh Rosemary

Fresh Basil

Washed and Spun Rosemary

Washed and Spun Basil

Once they are pretty much dry, bunch a few branches together - I grabbed like 4 or 5 at a time, and tied them together with some string  that was leftover from a previous project.












I would recommend a rubber band or twine next time.  As the branches dried and shrank, the silky string got a tad loose, and one bunch almost fell.  Learn from my mistake.

Tie your branches somewhere to dry.  Should be cool and breezy, like a pantry or maybe in your dining room under a ceiling fan because that's the only space you can find?


BEWARE: if you do this inside, your entire house will smell like rosemary for a week or so.  It's pretty rad, unless you hate the smell of rosemary.

I had to use twist-ties to actually get the bunches to stay in place along the shelf string.  Silky black string is pretty, but not that functional for this project.

   

     .....WAIT TWO WEEKS.....

Before...

After

 

You can store the spices however you'd like: crumble the basil, chop the rosemary into bits.... it's up to you.  I just stored the basil and rosemary leaves whole - I pulled the leaves off of the stems and put them in baby food jars, cause we've got tons of them.  See, having kids totally has perks!

FINISHED!