As you will recall, I was given two Glad bags of fresh basil earlier in the week. After spending hours (literally) de-stemming and cleaning the leaves, I used half of the leaves to make about 18 pints of pesto sauce. The remainder I used to make dried basil leaves.
This was the first stage of drying after I washed the leaves.
Next, I put the leaves into five containers because I have five shelves between my two ovens.
I heated my ovens to 200 degrees Fahrenheit for ten minutes at a time about twice a day for three days. Yesterday, Catherine inadvertently helped the process along by preheating the oven for some fish sticks. Fortunately, she smelled the basil and I was able to remove the pans just in time.
Today the remaining three pans were ready.
Once dried, the original five pans of basil leaves in the above picture were reduced to just the one pan below. The leaves were so brittle that they crackled just like leaves in the fall.
The final step was to mince the leaves in the food processor.
Basically, a tall kitchen bag of basil makes about a quart of dried basil leaves. And now you know the rest of the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment