Herb Drying Hack

If you're like me, you're always on the lookout for fun and small things that you can do as a little bit of a life hack. I love finding ways to do something that I normally would be doing, and adding something else to it that doesn't do anything to increase the time, effort or cost. What am I referring to here? Drying Herbs!

The other day I wanted to hang up some of the basil that we've got growing and didn't want to keep the plant around anymore since the season is coming to a close and I haven't had the time to water them. I was also making breakfast and noticed the way I happened to put the toaster on the counter just so happened to be directly underneath the basil! I said fuck it, let's see how it goes if I keep doing that for a few days and it turns out that it really does work!

I bet that eating toast is mostly an American thing, because it's certainly not the healthiest thing to be putting into our bodies but at the same time, the stuff tastes so damn good LOL especially with some delicious butter! :D For me, toast is something that I eat multiple times per week, though not necessarily every single day. I have been trying to get back into my habit of intermittent fasting and getting into more of a healthier mindset when it comes to that stuff. I figured though, why not make the toast that I would be making anyways, and put the toaster directly underneath the basil so that it gives it a slight cook but not expose it to too much heat and ruin it?!

It turned out to actually be a pretty good idea, and one that I know for sure I will be doing every time that we have basil to dry!

One of the things that I get annoyed about with herbs and drying them is that unless you have a dehydrator or something, there's always going to be the herbs that just don't fully dry so they are crispy. They are certainly dry and wilted but they have enough moisture in them so that they don't crinkle when you go to crush them. I hate having sort-of moist basil in my salads lol those things need to be crushed up into a find particulate matter! With the basil here, it really did a good job sitting above the toaster to make those pieces of basil perfectly crunchy and did a great job of speeding up the drying process.

Often times the drying process to get the crunchy basil that I like takes about 2-3 months of hanging on the counter and it's certainly impacted by the weather outside. The dryer weather that happens in a couple months where it gets pretty cold and the moisture level is incredibly low makes the stuff dry quite a bit faster as one would expect which is good. That is still a few months away though and I don't want this basil to sit there in the kitchen for that long, so using the toaster it is! I'm also proud that I honestly didn't web search anything for this lol I know it's a little lame but sometimes I get mad that I can't think of a good thing like this without some assistance. The web searching has made our brain intellectually lazy sometimes!

This was a fun hack and one that I am absolutely going to employ when it comes to drying out the additional things that we get like sage and rosemary, those are popular herbs that we get from the farms as well so it's always nice to preserve these things and it helps us reduce the things that we would buy from the grocery stores, which is in itself a win! Local and saving money, right up my alley!