How To Dry Herbs And Not Go To Jail

(a tale of two thymes in photos)

If you have never sheered a thyme plant before, it can seem a little intimidating at first. Pictured above is my lemon thyme in need of it's spring trimming. If you grow herbs with the intention of using them for cooking and drying, there are two times a year when it is best to trim: mid spring when all your herbs have been busy putting up lots of fresh growth, and fall, which is when your herbs will have fully recovered from the shearing they received in spring.

Obviously, when your herbs are prime for cutting will be influenced by your climate. In some states spring is just about over in March when everyone else's is just starting. You are going to have to rely on yourself to know when your true spring is. Another way to know when to sheer your herbs is to look at them. Yeah, it's that simple. If they are looking wooly with tender green growth, if they are ready.

Sheering thyme is just like giving a child a trim, except easier because it can't complain, it's life won't be ruined if you cut it unevenly, and it can't fidget. You just grab a handful (gently) and cut it off. I try to trim my herbs into pleasing mounds because they will essentially grow back into whatever shape I have cut them. You don't want to cut it completely down to the bottom stems. I like to leave plenty so it doesn't have bald spots. this will also ensure that I'll have plenty of fresh thyme for cooking with between trimmings.

Here are a couple of useful tips about trimming your herbs:

• Always sheer your herbs before they flower. An herb has the most flavor and scent and vigor before it has begun putting it's energy into flowering. Flowering usually happens when the herb gets to a certain level of maturity, or when the weather turns too warm (whichever happens first)

• It is also ideal to trim in the mornings. This is also a time of day when an herb is at peak freshness and flavor. Picking something when it is at it's peak of freshness and flavor is essential in producing a good quality preserved product.

• Always get your herbs trimmed before the spit bugs come. I will show you what to do if you are a lazy ass person who figured you could wait to dry your herbs whenever you had the leisure time. Spit bugs don't care when you have time. They have their festival of fun in your garden just as soon as they decide the time is right. Since I only just started noticing them about a week ago, I'm going to guess that for the Pacific Northwest, late spring is too late to avoid them.

This picture is so pretty you think I should submit it to Martha Stewart Magazine, huh? (I'd blush right now if I had any blushes left in me) If you have very sharp eyes you will notice that this is not my lemon thyme. First of all, such a subtle trim would not result in such a huge crop of herb. Also, it looks totally different. The lemon thyme had not yet been accosted by the spit bug population in my yard. My english thyme, however, has been assaulted. I had a lush LUSH planting of it from last year that the spit bugs got really excited about right about the same time I did. This thyme planting was mostly hidden by five foot tall dandelion weeds.

So what do you do if you have some LUSH thyme covered in spit bugs? Do you let them have it? Hell no! Processing bug covered thyme is definitely more work, but it's still worth it. The product will still be superior than any thyme you can buy in the store.

First you need to put it all in a large bowl and run water over it until the bowl fills up. Swish the herbs around with your hands. Your mind is probably leaping to the image of your hand coming in contact with gross bugs. Yes, yes it will. Not only that, the water is filled with bug spit! C'mon, don't be squeamish. If you eat meat you put animal carcass in your mouth every day, I have a hard time believing that anyone who will put a dead animal in their mouth could be worried about touching a little bug.

Most bugs aren't fish, so they will float to the surface of the water in a desperate bid for life. You can tilt the bowl to pour them out. Add more water to the bowl. You will need to swish those herbs and remove the floating bugs until you see no more bugs. Worried that you might miss one and end up with a little spit bug in your soup? No worries. Once you've exhaustively shaken all the bugs loose from your herbs, you pour out the water and transfer the herbs to your salad spinner.

You don't have a salad spinner? What kind of a homesteader are you anyway?! (Ha ha. Just kidding. I ruined my old salad spinner and lived without one for almost two years of wet lettuce hell. If you don't have one, may I suggest you get off your hesitant butt and get one?) Spin the hell out of your herbs. When drying herbs, it's really ideal to start off with herbs that are, uh, dry.* Now walk away from the salad spinner and go drink a beer or something. If there are any spit bugs left, they will begin to foam again. This make it very easy to find them and get rid of them.

Here's the lemon thyme all dried. It took about twelve hours set on about 105 degrees. The Nesco people tell you to dry your herbs at 95 degrees. They are fooling themselves. It will work of course, but not before your toddler is heading off to college. Don't try to dry them higher than 105 degrees though or your herbs will brown and be inferior just as though they were oven dried.

Once totally dry, the thyme is easily crumbled off of their stems into a container of your choice. So far I have dried: thyme, sage, cayenne peppers**, tarragon, oregano, bay leaves, and marjoram. The tarragon is the only one I'm not sure I'll like using dry. It's an experiment.

A few notes on dried herbs:

• Contrary to what some people want to believe, just because you dry your herbs doesn't mean they are going to be good forever. Like all preserved foods, you have only prolonged their usefulness, not given them eternal life in your pantry. If you haven't used up your dried herbs in about a year, you should probably dump them out in favor of a fresh batch. I tend to run out of mine because I only dry what I tend to use a lot of. I'd be pretty dense to try growing and drying star anise since I am actually afraid of using it because I'm secretly convinced that I hate it's flavor. Grow and dry herbs you find yourself buying in the store.

• You can tell when herbs have lost their integrity by smelling them. Crumble a bit in your fingers, it should smell strongly of it's own essence. If it smells mostly like dust and faded herb, it's too old. Also, a well dried herb usually dries a green, or a greyish green color, but generally not brown. If your herbs have turned brown, toss them.

• Another important thing to keep your eye out for is any kind of webs in your herbs. If you shake your herbs around in the jar or tin, and bits of herb seems to be clinging to each other as though a teeny tiny web was holding them together...that's because there is a teeny tiny web holding them together that has been made by teeny tiny bugs that get into your herbs if they are not kept air tight and if they are left unused for five years in the pantry. Toss them out.

*You may not believe me when I tell you this, but unless your herbs are VERY dirty and/or have bugs on them, you shouldn't wash them before drying them. I'm serious. When drying herbs it is always ideal to not get them wet first. Life will not end if you don't wash them first. If you think your dog is peeing on them, or if you grow yours by the side of the road I can understand feeling squeamish about their cleanliness. Otherwise, I think you've got to let go of your Howard Hughes style concerns.

**I didn't use the dehydrator for the cayenne peppers. They are the only thing I've had great luck with air drying. I think there was one last batch of them that didn't dry as well because the rain had settled in after harvesting them and so I finished them off in the dehydrator.