Best Methods on How to Dry & Start Dehydrating Parsley at Home

I will teach you to start dehydrating parsley with or without a garden. You will learn how to dry parsley in many other ways too!

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You can have parsley also known as garden parsley all year round if you dehydrate it!

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can still dry parsley and preserve it.

Using a food dehydrator is one of the best ways to preserve parsley as it extracts all the water from the herb leaving it bone dry.

You can start slowly creating your spice cabinet by preserving herbs like parsley.

Dehydrated herbs scratch can ultimately save you so much money because the one thing that has always been expensive at a grocery store is buying herbs.

With inflation, prices are worse, but regardless herbs are very expensive. 

Dehydrating Parsley Table of Contents

In my opinion, dehydrating herbs like parsley is worth it because It is used when cooking.

If you’re like me, you know the more spices you have in the cupboard, the better and tastier your food will be.

Whether you’re getting parsley from the grocery store, farmers market, or garden, you can have it all year round with these preserving tips. 

Why should you try or start to dehydrate parsley?

• It will save money on buying this culinary herb.
• Growing a herb garden and growing your own parsley, dehydrating it will preserve the parsley flavor.
• You can have parsley available all year long without buying it.
• You will avoid parsley going bad in your fridge and eliminate some food waste
• It’s so easy, why wouldn’t you do it!

Types of Parsley

• Flat leaf parsley- Italian parsley
• Common parsley
• Curly-leaf parsley

How to Harvest Parsley Tips

If you are growing your parsley, it does take about 70 to 90 days to get a good bunch of parsley to harvest.

• When you have mini springs of leaves of parsley everywhere, it’s time to harvest. 
• As long as you have at least 10 to 20 sprigs popping out of your parsley plant it is safe to harvest without destroying the planet.
• Grab garden scissors or garden snips, grab a bunch of parsley or a couple of sprigs of parsley, and cut from the bottom.
• Do not cut from the top, if you do, it won’t keep growing and give you more parsley.

Parsley is kind of like lettuce which is cut and comes again, so make sure to cut around the plant leaving some parsley in the middle.

This will help photosynthesis take place!

How to dehydrate parsley step-by-step instructions

Prep

Collect your parsley from your garden, or any other resource, and wash it through with water, no soap is required.

If your parsley, is coming from your garden, be aware of any bugs, critters, or dirt that needs a little bit more attention when washing.

Lay out your parsley in a dry place to air dry or you can use a salad spinner to make the drying process move faster.

Cut

Cut your parsley, leaving just the leaves first, and then pat dry with a towel.

You don’t have to cut each individual leave off as long as you have the top cut off from the entire sprig of parsley. You should be okay to preserve it.

Organize

Spread out all your parsley leaves on top of your dehydrator trays, preferably on a mesh-type tray. 

Dry

Set your dehydrator at the lowest temperature setting for about 6 to 8 hours.

I have the Magic mill food dehydrator and it is a great beginner’s dehydrator. Check out my review of the magic mill dehydrator.

Grind

Your parsley is completely dry to the point when you can hear a crunching noise and it crumbles when handling.

Place your parsley in a spice grinder to make your spice that is ready to go when cooking.

My spice grinder is wonderful, but for other grinders/blenders check out our top grinders and blenders for spices guide.

Store parsley in an air-tight container.

Other Ways to Dry Parsley

No worries if you do not have a dehydrator, here are other ways to dry parsley:

Air drying

When gathering parsley, get all the springs together in small bundles, and tie them together with a rubber band or string. 

Place your bunch of parsley upside down in a cool place or a room that is at room temperature that does not get a lot humid indoors but gets a lot of good air circulation.

You can also place your parsley in a dry location and on a clean surface where it will get airflow, but also be away from any animals, kids, or too much moisture.

Microwave

After cleaning the parsley, for the best result place parsley on a paper towel and place another paper towel on the bottom and on top.

Microwave for 2 minutes.

Depending on your microwave set it for 2-minute increments until nice and dried, depending on much you are drying it can take up to 2 minutes total. 

You will be surprised at how much of the bright green color parsley keeps when drying it in the microwave.

Air fryer

There are a lot of different air fryers out there, but most commonly you can place your cleaned parsley in an air fryer and dry it in 10-minute increments at 200 F until fully dry.

Keep an eye on the heat as you can easily burn your parsley as it heats up very quickly.

How Do You Store Dry Parsley?

Any air-tight container preferably an airtight glass container will prolong the shelf life and is the best option the store dry herbs.

Prevent any mold, or spoilage by placing your parsley in an airtight container.

You could use plastic but you don’t want any chemicals to leech out so the best air-tight material you can use is glass.

Using a mason jar for any type of glass jar with a top will be a great airtight container to hold your parsley in.

To give my herbs, some aesthetic I use these beautiful airtight wood tops for my wide-mouth mason jars.

Ways to preserve parsley

In addition to drying parsley, you can also preserve it in many ways in the kitchen.

Other ways you can preserve parsley include:

• Using an ice tray, place cleaned/dry parsley in olive oil and pour it into individual ice trays.
• Freezing your parsley in olive oil with ice trays is a great way to get parsley ready for when you need it.
• Making parsley pesto with your parsley, freeze it, or using it for dishes throughout the week.
• Grind out your parsley and make your spices by mixing them with other spices.
• If you have a freeze dryer, you can also freeze-dry parsley in big batches. 
• If you freeze-dry your parsley, your parsley can last for over 20 years.
• Make parsley tea at home.
• Create a fresh parsley pasta

Dehydrating parsley is very easy as you can tell, anyone can do it!

You don’t need a garden to preserve parsley, get it at your local farmers market or grocery store and dehydrated so you can have it all year long.

We hope all these tips helped you to dry parsley. 

Let us know in the comments below how you are dehydrating parsley.

More food-preserving posts.

Best Guide on How to Make Dehydrated Strawberries in a Dehydrator

How to Dry Basil Leaves: 7 Different Methods

How to Stock a Pantry for a Year: Healthy tips & Pantry Staples

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