Drying Oregano, Marjoram, Chamomile & Other Herbs
Oregano is coming in strong as spring progresses. It is always a reliable herb in our garden, hardy and prolific. Left to its own it might take over the garden!
We love the flavor of herbs in our cooking. It is the month of May and oregano is abundant in our garden and easy to dry. Dried oregano is added to many of our tastiest dishes. Here is our process for drying herbs in general with a focus on oregano and a few other herb friends.
Oregano Harvest
The first step is cutting fragrant oregano stems. A day or two before harvesting we spray the oregano bed with water to rinse off any dust that may have settled on the leaves. The oregano is growing quickly here in May, so the leaves are young and fresh with little time for dust to gather anyway.
For timing the harvest, we like to catch them at the stage where the stems have lots of leaves but before the stems start to branch. This makes it easy to strip the leaves from the stems for drying. Typical stems will have 6 to 8 pairs of leaves on each stem.
The harvester has the pleasure of enjoying the aroma of fresh oregano.
Hanging Oregano to Dry
An easy way to dry oregano and many other herbs is simply tying a bundle of stems together and hanging up to dry. Here we used a twist tie to make the bundle. String or rubber bands also work well. Since there is shrinkage as the herbs dry, make sure they are tightly tied. The rubber bands work well since they stay tight as the herbs dry.
Hang out of the sun in a well ventilated space. We use our garage. Good air circulation is the key to effective drying. In our dry climate, herbs dry easily. In locations with higher humidity a fan to circulate air can help. The amount of heat is less important than having good air flow.
For us, we’ll dry oregano for 2 or 3 weeks until the leaves are quite crispy and dry. The dry leaves should crumble easily under your fingers. Once dried the leaves can be stripped off the stems for storage. There will be stem pieces mixed in the leaves. We pick the larger stem pieces out for a better quality product. If you grind the leaves before using them, the stems will be ground and you probably will not know stems are there. When used as whole leaves without grinding, those harder stems may be unwelcome in the final recipe!
Hanging Marjoram in Net Bags
Marjoram is a smaller leaved cousin of oregano. We love the more delicate aroma and flavor of marjoram. It is more subtle than oregano with a wonderful floral scent. You can buy jars of oregano that have good flavor, but marjoram is one herb that is so much better fresh from the garden (or dried from the garden).
In the photo above you can see the small flower buds starting to grow. We harvest before flowering for peak flavor. They will send up more stems and leaves from the cut stems.
An alternative to tying herbs in bunches for drying is to pack them loosely into net bags and hang the whole bag. We got these net bags for storing garlic and other things that like air circulation. The bags also work for drying herbs, especially smaller leaved herbs like marjoram and thyme. The net bags allow for good air flow and putting herbs into the bags is faster than tying up bunches of stems, particularly these smaller marjoram stems.
The marjoram can also be rinsed and drained before placing in the bags. Then any remaining water can be removed by spinning the bag after it is filled with herbs. Grab the top of the bag and spin your arm around a circle to extract most of the moisture.
Then another benefit of using net bags for these smaller leaved herbs is once they are dry, the small leaves can be removed by rubbing the bag betwen your hands over a large bowl. The leaves come out of the bag and most of the stems are left behind. There will be some stems that come along with the leaves. Pick those stems out and you are ready to go.
Drying Herbs in a Dehydrator
Since we dry a lot of herbs, we invested in a food dryer/dehydrator to aid the process. It takes a few steps to get herbs ready for drying in the dehydrator, but we can dry them more quickly and get a better quality product compared to hanging the herbs to dry.
We first strip the leaves off the stems. It takes a little time, but gives a nice clean result in the dried herbs. All those larger stems are removed before drying. The small tips of stems with young leaves attached are fine to go into the dryer. With a little practice you get into a good rhythm of stripping the leaves then pinching off the tender tip. Taking a little more time here gives us the clean final product we like.
We rinse the leaves in a salad spinner and spin dry. The result is extra clean high quality herbs without any tough stems. Consider it the extra fancy grade A oregano!
Next, we transfer the oregano leaves to the drying trays. They should be loosely arranged to allow for good air circulation. Our dehydrator holds 9 trays. There is not much space between trays and when fresh the oregano leaves are a bit fluffy so we have to leave alternate tray slots empty. We’ll start with 4 trays.
Once the leaves start drying (about 2 hours) they wilt and take up less space. Then we can stack the trays closer. Once the first 4 trays have dried a couple hours, we’ll adjust to have a tray in each slot then add 2 more trays of fresh oregano. Another option is to remove those 4 trays temporarily and start 4 more trays. When the new batch wilts, all 8 trays will fit.
We prefer drying at 100 Fahrenheit (about 38 Celsius). We’ve found higher temperatures cause more browning of leaves and the flavor may suffer as well. In our dehydrator the oregano takes about 24 hours to get crispy dry. We’ll let it sit in the dehydrator another day, with the dehydrator off, to assure they are fully dry.
Always check to make sure they crumble easily under your fingers and feel crispy. If they still feel flexible they need more drying.
Once dried, they are ready to pack in jars for storage. A batch of 6 trays yields about 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of dried oregano leaves. That packs nicely into 1.5 quart jars (1.4 liters). We don’t pack them too tightly, because we don’t want them too crushed. Keeping them mostly whole retains more of the good aroma and flavor. We’ll grind small batches to put in a spice jar for cooking as needed to give us the most oregano flavor.
Other Herbs – Tareh (garden leeks) and Chamomile
Chamomile is another herb we dry to enjoy as tea throughout the year. Flowers are best picked around mid-morning, after the are fully open and any morning dew has evaporated. For Chamomile, the harvesting is the tedious part, picking all those little flowers. But once picked, there is no stripping the leaves from the stems as in oregano. To get extra clean product, we rinse and spin before putting on the drying tray.
The chamomile dries well in about the same 24 hour period as oregano.
Our homegrown chamomile has significantly fresher flavor than what we find sold commercially.
Tareh (garden leek) is also wonderful to have dried to use in cooking when fresh is not available. It also is a good way preserve these tasty leaves when they are in abundance. Here in the month of May, the tareh we planted last year are about to head into flowering mode, so time to harvest. It’ll be a couple months before our newly started tareh begins to produce many leaves.
The tareh dries well in about 24 hours, similar to oregano.
Herbs that dry well in the dehydrator include:
- Oregano leaves
- Tareh leaves, chopped
- Chamomile flowers
- Feverfew leaves
- Lemon balm leaves
- Spearmint leaves
- Peppermint leaves
- Green onions, chopped thinly
- Fenugreek leaves
- Chives, chopped
Herbs with smaller leaves are more difficult to dry in the dehydrator because the dried leaves have a tendency to fall through the holes in the trays. For those herbs, hanging to dry can be a better option.
Herbs that do well drying by hanging include:
- Oregano leaves
- Rosemary leaves
- Thyme leaves
- Marjoram leaves
We love to have dried herbs always at hand to make tasty dishes. Try growing some of these herbs in your garden and you’ll find the flavors are amazing.
Enjoy!
Zanganeh Garden 