Dried vegetables and spices, step by step
Interactive lesson: from a basket of vegetables to a spice jar — cutting, drying until brittle, stock powder, ground paprika, blends and storing in the dark.
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The whole lesson as text
1. What to dry
Not everything is worth drying: dried vegetables are at their best as a seasoning and a base for soup.
- Roots for stock powder — Carrots, celeriac, parsley root and parsnips are the most valuable: for stock powder, soups and broths.
- Leaves for seasoning — Parsley, celery and dill leaves are dried for seasoning, stock powder and salads.
- Onions and peppers — Dry onions and garlic if you have a surplus. Thin-walled red peppers go into ground paprika, chillies into flakes.
- A jar from a kilogram — 1 kg of fresh vegetables leaves roughly 50–150 g dried. Garlic gives about 330 g.
Why: A kilogram of fresh carrots, celeriac and parsley root lasts two weeks in the fridge. Dried and ground, it fits in a 200 mL jar and lasts a year, with no electricity and no fridge.
- Courgettes, green beans and cabbage are better fresh or frozen; drying them is less often worth it.
- Dry the skins and seeds from the tomato press at 55 °C (130 °F), grind and sieve: tomato powder.
2. Preparing and drying
Thinly cut vegetables dry evenly and quickly.
- Grate the roots — Wash and peel carrots, celeriac, parsley root and parsnips, then grate coarsely or cut into 2–3 mm slices.
- Onions in rings — Onions and leeks in 3–5 mm rings, garlic in 2–3 mm slices. Onions are not blanched.
- Briefly in steam — Steam the roots for 2–3 min, then cool. Leaves, onions and peppers go in without blanching.
- Separately, 50–60 °C — Dry each kind separately: roots and onions at 50–60 °C (120–140 °F), leaves at 35–40 °C (95–105 °F). Together, the leaves would burn while the carrots are still moist.
Why: Steam-blanching keeps the colour, shortens drying and reduces the number of microbes on the surface. Above 65 °C (150 °F) vegetables case-harden — dry outside and still moist inside — and peppers darken and turn bitter.
- For stock powder you can skip blanching, but the colour is darker.
- Next to a wood-burning range the temperature easily goes over 80 °C. Don't dry in a room with a stove or generator running without good ventilation, because of carbon monoxide (CO).
3. When it's dry · Locked
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4. Homemade stock powder · Locked
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5. Ground paprika · Locked
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6. Blends and storage · Locked
Buy the Dried vegetables and spice blends module and you get the PDF to download and print, plus lifetime access to this interactive lesson: all 6 chapters, 24 steps.