All content copyright Katrina Hall 2008 through 2025

Saturday, July 23, 2011

dillyicious: home drying fresh dill in the microwave in 4 minutes






All too often, I reach into the vegetable drawer for that lovely bunch of fresh dill, pull out the plastic bag, and find a mushy, blackened slime fit for only the compost heap. Finally, finally, my timing was right, and I was able to stash several tablespoons full of freshly dried dill in my herb tin. And it took perhaps a half an hour, start to finish.

Here's how:

Remove your bunch of dill, and pinch off only the brightly colored, clean stems.
From the stems, pinch off only the wavy, delicate fronds, leaving the stems behind.
Place a paper towel on a large plate, and arrange the dill on top of the paper towel. Place another paper towel on top of the dill fronds.
As I have a ten year old microwave, you'll have to experiment with timing. The dill fronds took four minutes to dry in my ancient microwave.
Remove the top paper towel, and let sit for a few minutes.
Crumble the dill between your fingers - if it isn't totally dry, try another minute or two.
Let the dill completely dry, and crumble until fine, discarding the little twigs.
Place in an air-tight tin or bottle. As you see above, the dill I got from the health food store is quite faded, while the home dried is bright green.

Use for any number of recipes, from french potato salad, to leek and potato soup, to one pot chicken and vegetables, or simply stirred into creme fraiche with salt and pepper for a dip.

17 comments:

Barb said...

Oooo! Your fresh, dried dill is beautiful - such a bright, lovely green! And so quick to make in the microwave. Did you grow the dill yourself? I trust you will be tossing out the old dill?

I love dill. I recently had a 'sort-of' Greek salad with lots and lots of dill in it - delicious!

katrina said...

Hi, Barb! Your salad sounds wonderful! I didn't grow the dill - the house I'm renting has terrible soil and isn't good for gardening, sorry to say. Even in my past gardens, I never was able to grow a lovely tall patch of dill, for some reason - so now I just buy it.
Two more microwave batches today, then I'm tossing the stems and yucky parts in the compost, but I feel very pleased that this time I remembered to dry it BEFORE it went off.....

Daisy said...

Thanks for your directions. It was easy and worked perfectly after 2 minutes in the microwave, 1000 watts. I grew my dill in a milk carton but will plant lots more next year. It's hard to even find dill in the store, and it's expensive.

katrina said...

That's great, Daisy! Thanks for your feedback on the directions, which is always welcome.

Unknown said...

Hi katrina
I was reading your idea for drying fresh dill. sounds easy and quick. i am going to try it but what i would like to know is, what did you do with the dill heads?

katrina said...

Dennis - there were no seed heads - just the stems and fronds, but I don't see why you couldn't dry the seedheads. I would dry them separately - good luck!

Donna C. said...

I use dill for all sorts of recipes from homemade cheese spread to salmon and even in salads. I love this idea.

katrina said...

It's a wonderful herb, I agree, Donna! And as Daisy pointed out in her comment, often our supermarket doesn't even have it available fresh - so having a stash of dried dill is wise. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

HOLY SHIT IT STARTED A FIRE! WHAT THE HELL DID I DO WRONG!?

katrina said...

Anon - I have no idea what went wrong, but if you microwaved 2 - 3 minutes it shouldn't cause a fire!

Anonymous said...

Paper towels from recycled paper can have tiny bits of metal that. cannot be seen...how scary!! :-(

katrina said...

That is truly bizarre, Anon! I use plain old white paper towels ( which probably have bleach?

Anonymous said...

I have terrible clay soil last year I planted a packet of wildflowers.. Some dill came up in the mix. This year the dill is volunteering in an 8 Sq. Ft. Area across the yard from the original plant. It's happy and flourishing in terrible soil with no help.

Anonymous said...

I have terrible clay soil last year I planted a packet of wildflowers.. Some dill came up in the mix. This year the dill is volunteering in an 8 Sq. Ft. Area across the yard from the original plant. It's happy and flourishing in terrible soil with no help.

I was instructed to ALWAYS put a cup of water in microwave to prevent fire when heating dry stuff to prevent fire

katrina said...

Anon: that's a good point - I'll try that the next time I find fresh dill.

Unknown said...

I stopped using the paper towels as I once also had a fire in the microwave when drying my herbs using paper towels. I just put mine on a microwavable plate in the microwave. Works just fine.

Anonymous said...

I too had a fire. Used a plate only for 2 mins. Worked great. Ty