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Drying parsley in the microwave gives you an 'instant result'.
Drying any herb can be time consuming - our ancestors had no choice in the matter but their homes were very different to ours.
To dry herbs in the conventional way involves having them hanging around for days or weeks - the results can be good or disastrous - ie they go mouldy and are unuseable.
You can try a sample lesson to help you decide if the Herbal Academy of New England is the right choice for you - follow the link below.
The problem with drying herbs in the old fashioned way is that if
your results are bad, then you might not get another chance because the
herbs have gone past their best or even stopped growing.
By drying in the microwave, you know within minutes if it's worked - if it's failed, you can simply go out and pick some more and have another go.
Watch the video or read the instructions - it's super quick.
I'll give instructions here for parsley, but this method holds good for any herb.
One thing you need to bear in mind though is that drying with heat does impair the flavour to some extent - the heat does affect the essential oils - but the choice is yours - freezing is my preferred method of preserving herbs and the instructions are in the 'preserving herbs' section on the sidebar.
Pick your parsley before it flowers. It's best to do it in the
morning just after the dew has evaporated and before the sun gets too
strong - this is a lovely job.
If the parsley is muddy, then wipe it with a dry cloth and then place the sprigs on a microwave proof plate.
If it is very dirty, then you will need to wash it on the plant and leave it to dry naturally, so you might need to wait until next day.
Blast for 30 seconds and then turn the sprigs over and blast another 30 seconds.
Leave to cool and see if the sprigs are brittle - if they are, then crumble them into jars, if not, give them another 30 seconds.
It's quite simple and as you can see, takes very little time.
A word of caution here - some visitors have commented that parsley burst into flames in the microwave - it's never happened to me, but just be careful.
Caryl from St Louis has said that she stripped the leaves from the stems and it didn't happen.
That makes sense as the stems are much thicker than the leaves, so you wouldn't need to 'blast' them for so long.
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