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Has anyone tried to dry greens such as collards, mustard greens, turnip greens? I am going to try just to see how they will taste. I plan on washing the leaves, then threading thru the stems and hanging them from a line on my porch.
I have dried them and they come out just fine. However I use a dehydrator. My greens tend to end up in soups, smoothies or cooked with smoked meat so they would have been cut up in any event. Unless you need whole leaves I just cut them up, wash them a few times, run them through a salad spinner and then place them in the machine. Since I really do not care how crushed up they get I also place them in vacuum bags.
If you want the greens whole in order to stuff them then you have to be really gentle with them once dry since they are very fragile and quite frankly a hassle to handle. Better to just get fresh IMO.
Last spring I took a tour of a century+ community garden at a Shaker village, where I was introduced to lovage.
Then I tried to get some for my garden. But by then it was too late into the season. So now lovage is top on my list of new crops to try.
It is said to be a pot-herb that you can harvest all winter long. It grows as a hedge, if not trimmed it can grow 8 foot tall. A planting can be grow and be harvested from for many decades.
Pot-herbs are greens that can be diced and introduced into stews, to blend flavors and reduce bitterness of foraged greens.
The only experience I have is with spearmint and peppermint. I cut the stalks from my garden, tie the ends together to form bunches, and then hang the bunches upside down until all the leave are dried out. I don't see why that wouldn't work with other leafy things.
Can't you just put them in water to get them to be kind of moist again? I mean with dry chilly peppers you can just put them in water and they become softer and easier to eat.
I am removing the main vein from the leaf and stringing the remaining pieces of the leaf on a cord separated by knots. When the leaf pieces are thoroughly dry, I will soak in water and cook. I will let you know how it turns out!
You could probably grow greens year round in the southern half of the country with a good cold frame up against the south side foundation of the house, an insulated night cover and straw bale insulation around the unit but that is another topic....
I usually can grow some greens all winter here in southern Louisiana. Just pile on the mulch, plus cover for freezing weather. I do can the excess. I like the texture of collards best, but I have canned tendergreens, mustard greens, collards, turnip greens and spinach. By the way, when canning turnips, I plant a row of turnip greens that are grown for the tops. They don't produce a good root. That way, I can (or freeze) turnip tops with the chopped turnip roots.
I am interested in drying just to have a 3rd way of preserving winter greens.
Mustard greens did not dry well. They crumbled too easily. Still working on the collards
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Experiment started
