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Lesson 1 Drying, Freezing, Making Syrups, and Essential Oils

I know seems like a weird topic, but the truth of the matter is that if you cook with almost any kind of seasoning, you are buying herbs. If you are interested in alternative healing, chances are good you use some form of herbal medication. Heck if you use regular medication some of it is herbal. If you going to the local grocery store or a health food store for your herbs you are being robbed, those little bottles are expensive and the herbs in some cases are weak (more likely true in the grocery store than a specialty store, but always check the labels to see) because of how long they have been sitting on the shelf. If you have a green thumb at all (or if you're looking into gardening or even if a friend gardens) you're much better off growing your own seasons because:

1.It's cheaper.
2. You know how long the herbs have been sitting around
3. You know what sort of chemical and fertilizers were used growing the plants.
4. It can be fun.

I'm not going to provide a how to on growing the plants, but I will say that a lot of herbs are easy to grow, just follow the directions that come with the plant.

Harvesting the Plant
Alright so you've got that plant sitting right in front of you and you're ready to stop hacking right? Wrong. WARNING: Plant extracts come from different parts of plants and in some cases using the wrong part of a plant is deadly, before drying anything know which part of the plant you are supposed to use. There are many different herbal dictionaries out there that will tell you which parts are appropriate to be using.

Also of note, some herbs don't do well for drying storage. Some herbs are best if frozen for storage or used when fresh. I'm not going to detail each plant specifics because I don't know them but I will tell you how dry, freeze, make syrups, and make essential oils.

Back to gathering our crop though. We now have our desired plant and we know what we want to dry (leaves, flowers, seeds). We're really getting somewhere, now what's needed is scissors as they will do the least damage when you are removing the desired clippings.

There are two factors to consider when it comes to the quanity of herb you clips. The first factor is how much of this ingredient do you need/ will you use before it goes bad. The second factor to consider is how much can you cut from the herb before you do it damage. These are all things you're going to have to eye ball for yourself. When in doubt take less, you can always take more after its grown back.

Hopefully you're still waiting before clippimg because there is one more thing to consider before you start harvesting all those precious herbs, when will you get the best quality product? Some suggestions on when to pick the herbs are:

1. Wait for a clear day

2. The ideal time when there are the most essential oils in the plant is in the period is right after the dew has dried from the leaves or fairly early in the morning. Its bad to collect herbs when they are still damp because you risk mold, but if you wait too long after the dew has evaporated than the sun's heat has begun to dissapate the oils in the plant that you want.

3. If you are looking for fragrance of the leaves, picking right before the bloom of the plant will give you the strongest scent.

4. If you are looking for taste in leaves or stems of the plant it is best to always pinch of the flower buds. The plant gets more bitter after blooming as a lot of the energy goes to the flower.

5. For flowers you want to pick as soon as the flower bud has opened so you limit the amount of fading or browning that happens.

6. Obviously be choosey about what you take. Bug eaten, wilted, or browning samples aren't what you want.

Drying Herbs

Woot, you've just picked your lovely herbs and now all you need is phase two, well here we go. This section will be divided up into how to dry plants in long bunches (leaves attached to stems), how to dry petals and flowers, and how to cheat and dry herbs in the oven.

Drying In Long Stemmed Bunches:

1.gather the herbs into small bunches of stems.

2.Tie the ends together with string

3.hang bunches upside down in a dim place far enough apart that air will circulate in between the bunches.

Drying Leaves and Flowers:

1. scatter in a single layer on a drying tray (drying tray is made of either Muslim, nylon screening stretched across a wooden frame)

2. leave enough space between herbs that air can hit as many spaces a possible, if short of space make trays stackable.

Notes to Keep in Mind When Drying Plant Material:

3. It takes 2-10 days to dry herbs depending on humidity

4. If it is too humid, you can speed drying process up by spreading herbs on cookie sheet and finish drying at the lowest temperature setting on the oven available with door ajar for the moisture to escape.

5. Too much humidity could cause mold on the plants material.

6. Too much sun could take away some of the potency of the herbs.

5. The faster leaves and flowers dry, the more color and scent they retain.

How to Cheat and Dry Herbs in the Oven:

1.Set oven to 95 degrees, most ovens (Well all of them now a days, I've got some old sources) don't go this low, that's ok, the lowest setting will work just fine.

2.Put herbs on a cookie sheet and cook until the herbs look dried. This will take a couple of hours and the time varies on what you are drying (oranges for example take all night, but basil leaves only take an hour or so for example). Make sure you keep the oven open a crack and keep checking on the plants.

3. Watch out for the oven's inconsistencies. What works in one oven won't work in another, and also ovens don't heat areas evenly, this becomse obvious with drying herbs because one part will dry MUCH faster than the other part of the tray sometimes.

*Notes once the Herbs are dried*

Keep the final product away from extreme heat and light.

Dried herbs start to lose their flavor after six months on the shelf.

MOST dried herbs are more potent than fresh ones and you only want to use one teaspoon of dried herb product for every three teaspoons of fresh herb. Just a helpful converstion to know.

Freezing Herbs

"But blind, even you've got to see that some herbs don't do well drying." Of course not. Can't treat all plants the same. So now we're on to storing herbs in the freezer. You may have seen this method used before with garlic in the grocery store. Well now I'm going to show you how to be snazzy all by yourself. Woot tutorial!

Freezing the herbs:

1. Wrap the clippings in foil or plastic container and store in freezer.

2.These hervs wil have same potency of fresh herbs so more will be needed (three teaspoons to every one teaspoon of dried herb).

4.Soome good herbs to freeze include basil, chives, and mint as they don't always or usually end up drying really well. *If you want to dry these herbs I would suggest the oven method because the sooner the herbs dry the more potent they remain*

5.WARNING... leaves may turn black, that's fine to eat, just unsettling.

Puree Herbs With Water and Freeze in Ice Cube Tray:

1. This method works well with coriander and dill.

2. This is also a good choice if you want to put a little something in iced tea, iced coffee, or juice (though its look might not be what you're going for)

3.one cube= 1 tablespoon of fresh herb

Syrups:

So what are these syrups? Weird I know, or at least I thought they were weird when I was reading about them, but you know they are really helpful. You can use syrups to flavor drinks, sorbets, some people put some of it on ice cream (mint syrup on chocolate ice cream=yum), or to flavor desserts. I figured I'd add it in for fun, but the process is long and after doing it a couple of times, I think I'd rather pay for the premaid stuff. It was a good experiment though and this is really helpful if you want a syrup that has no artifical coloring, or if you want to make one that the store wouldn't conventionally sell (bee balm syrup or maybe rosemary for example).

Ingredients:

2 cups of sugar

¼ cup of whichever chopped fresh herb is specified in recipe

5 cups of water

Directions:

1.place sugar, herbs and water in a saucepan

2.bring saucepan to a boil while stirring occasionally to dissolve sugar

3.when syrup reaches boiling point reduce he heat to low and simmer for five minutes

4.let cool to room temp and refrigerate it overnight

5.strain the syrup and discard the herb

Herbed Oils:

I know you've all been waiting for it. Make your own herbal oils ^.^

Note: For best results use olive oil, though vegetable oil is acceptable.

1.add desired herbs and spices to the oil

2.steep in a closed bottle or container in warm but not hot place for a few weeks.

3. Strain herbs before using.

*reserved for teas and other drinks* ninja

*Reserved because I can* sweatdrop

Oh this looks really helpful! I just might try that syrup stuff sometime, because mint syrup on ice cream DOES sound delicious. And it doesn't look too hard to make.

I can't wait for the potpourii and drinks. heart

I love sugar in the raw 4laugh

I just noticed the oils bit (again). It seems that my no 'poo regimen could use a dash of lavender EO (cut down on grease and dandruff). Will using an oil recipe like that yield something comparable to essential oils I could buy commercially?

I love this guide! What kind of herbs or flowers do you recommended for the herbal oils?
Are you still going to continue the guide?