Drying Dill - How To Do It Right

Dry the dill and preserve for seasoning purposes

Proper preparation for harvest and drying

The day before harvest, you should water the dill thoroughly. When doing this, pour the water over the filigree parts of the plant outside of the midday heat to wash off dust and insects. By saving the later washing of the harvested plant parts, you preserve more of the actual herbal aroma inside the plants. Herbs harvested during the daytime and after one or two sunny days usually taste more intense than herbs and herbs that are cut at night or on rainy days. If you want to harvest and dry the dill tips, you should do so before the dill blooms in summer. As with many other herbs, the aroma in the leaves of dill is more pronounced before flowering than after it. However, you automatically forego the formation of the dill seeds,which can also be dried and preserved for use as a spice.

Air dry dill

You will get the best taste result if you let the dill dry slowly in the air. To do this, cut off the individual dill shoots with a clean kitchen knife and bundle them into small bundles of herbs. If you really want to wash them, you can gently pat them dry with kitchen paper before drying. Hang bunches of herbs in a well-ventilated place with a rain cover and wait about two weeks. Then the dill should be dried enough to easily crumble between your fingers. At this point you can cut up the bunches of dill and put them in airtight screw-top jars for storage.

Dry dill in the oven or in the dehydrator

You can dry dill faster than in the air if you use a commercially available dehydrator. When drying in the oven, you should consider the following:

the maximum temperature must be around 43 degrees Celsius
the individual dill stalks should be spread out in one layer if possible for good ventilation
the door must be kept ajar with the handle of a wooden spoon to allow moisture to escape

Tips & Tricks

If you want it to go really quickly, you can also dry dill between absorbent paper in the microwave at low power. However, the dill dried in this way only lasts for about 2 weeks, while conventionally dried dill can be used for more than a year if stored correctly.