Microwave herb drying

I read an article recently in the Grass Roots magazine about how to dry herbs in your microwave. I had a go with Corriander and it worked really well. Here is how it goes:

The article is written by Carol Fletcher and she suggests picking the herbs early in the morning when they are fresh. If you water them the night before, you probably won't need to wash them when you pick them, as all the dust and dirt will have been washed off them with the watering.

Pull the leaves off and Carol suggests putting the leaves in piles of similar sized leaves. Although I found it worked ok putting different sized leaves together, just refer to my tip a bit later in this piece.

Place the leaves on paper towel and place another piece of paper towel on top. Put this carefully into the microwave. If your microwave is 1100watts, microwave on high for 2 mins, longer may be needed if your microwave is not as powerful. Carefully lift the paper towel with herbs out and flip it over. Place back in the microwave and give it another minute on high.

Take them out again and remove any leaves that have gone crunchy. Any that are still damp, put back in the microwave and give them 20 second burst until they are crunchy. If you put in different sized leaves like I did, smaller ones will go crunchy first. Each time pull out the ones that have gone crunchy so they don't burn.

Carol suggests that each time you dry herbs, use fresh paper towel so you don't transfer the tastes. So if you are doing basil followed by parsley for example, you would change the paper towel.

Store them in air tight containers. I picked a heap of corriander and dried them for use when my corriander is out of season. I found it is a quick way of drying herbs when you only have fresh herbs but the recipe you are making at them time requires dried herbs.