How to Dry Thyme? The 3 Ways!
You can store thyme in many ways. One of the ways is to dry fresh thyme yourself and then store it well packed so that it stays good for a long time. You can dry the thyme sprigs in the oven or even in special drying ovens for fruit and vegetables. Read more about this in this blog.
Drying thyme: if you want to dry thyme, you can hang small bunches of thyme in a dark room. After 1 week the bunches of thyme are dry or you dry thyme slowly in an oven. You can also dry thyme leaves after you have zipped them off the twigs.
In this blog, you can read what you should pay attention to when you start drying thyme and what the options are. You can dry sprigs of thyme, but also only the leaves.
Thyme G edroogd
When we buy a bunch of thyme, we generally have more than half left. What you could do is dry thyme. How do you dry thyme now? There are a number of ways to dry thyme.
- Let air dry
- Let it dry in an oven
- Only let the needles dry
Thyme Drying – In The Air
When you have picked thyme from the garden or you have thyme leftover, you wash the thyme and let it drain on kitchen paper or you ‘beat’ it for a while. This way you can remove cobwebs, sand and bugs from the thyme.
After this has drained you can make bunches of 6 to 7 branches. Do not make the bushes too thick because then they can go moldy and make sure that the twigs hang a bit apart. Put a string around the twigs if you want to hang the bushes decoratively, otherwise, an elastic band will suffice.
Hang the brushes separately. Hang the thyme upside down. Preferably do this in a dark room that is well ventilated. Can be a shed, a cellar or attic, but also an inside of a cupboard that is ajar. After a week or 2 you can check whether all thyme has dried. Take a look at the part that is bound together. This will take a little longer to dry.
Store the dried thyme in a container that you can close tightly. Put it away in a dry place, otherwise, moisture could come in and mold. Place a sticker on the container so that everyone knows what is in it.
You can of course also hang the bushes somewhere for decoration and use it whenever you want.
Thyme Drying – Leaves
When the thyme has dried you can easily remove/shake the leaves. This way you only have the leaves and storage takes up less space. It does cause a mess and you only have to fish out the dried leaves.
There is another way to get leaves from the stems in a fairly easy way. You have to zip the leaves off the stems. When you do this with a fresh twig, the twig usually breaks at the end and the leaves remain largely attached to me. So now I do it like this:
Thyme R ashing
There is an easy way to simply zip the leaves from the fresh stems:
Take a sieve or a colander with small holes. Insert the stems in the holes from above and pull the stalk out at the bottom. Check for yourself at what speed you have to do this, but now at least the leaves of the thyme will get stuck in the colander or sieve.
You can dry these leaves on kitchen paper, out of the sun, in a ventilated room. After a week the leaves are dried. You can check that by breaking the leaves. If they break quickly then they are dry otherwise they can be left for another day or so.
Thyme Drying Oven
You can also dry herbs in the oven. It takes a little more energy, but you definitely save time.
When you set the oven to the lowest setting (50 degrees), the thyme takes about 3 to 5 hours to dry. Leave the oven ajar so that the moisture in the thyme can escape. You can also set the oven to 80 degrees, it will take about 2 to 3 hours. The slower it dries, the better the flavor is retained.
When your timer goes, check if the thyme is really dry. If you can easily break the thyme, the springs are dry. Otherwise, remove the part that is dry and leave the rest in the oven for a while to dry further.
Have fun drying thyme!
