Herbs

3 Easy Methods for Drying Mint Leaves for Tea

drying mint leaves for tea

Here are three easy methods for drying mint leaves for tea.

Mint is a plant that grows like a weed. If you planted mint in your garden, it can grow very quickly. Sometimes, mint comes into your garden from a neighbor’s yard, or as a native weed to your location.



If you have a lot of mint and don’t know what to do with it, drying mint leaves to use for tea is a great option. Mint tea is great for your health. It helps your stomach, so you can drink mint tea if you have an upset stomach. It’s also great to drink after a meal to freshen your breath.

SEE ALSO: How to Grow Mint Indoors

There are many different methods for drying mint leaves for tea. Here are the easiest methods …

How to Dry Mint Leaves for Tea

How to gather mint for drying

The best way to get mint to dry is to pick it fresh. When you go to harvest mint, make sure that you get the mint that still hasn’t started flowering. This is when the mint is the strongest. Use very sharp shears or a knife to cut the mint, so that the edges are nice and clean. Make sure that you don’t cut further than a third of the stem if you want the mint to be able to grow back.

After you have harvested the mint, wash it in the sink under cold running water. Then, put the stems and leaves on a dry paper towel for a few hours until they are completely dried.



Air-drying mint leaves

For this method, you will need to keep the mint leaves attached to their stalks.

Be careful when you pick and wash the mint so that they are intact.

  • Create several small bundles of mint. This number of bundles you need depends on how much mint you gathered. You can put several stalks together, but make sure it’s not so many that they are difficult to hold.
  • Tie the ends of the stalks together with twine. Try to tie them tightly, and don’t tie down any of the leaves.
  • Hang the mint upside down in a room that is warm, dark, and ventilated. Don’t hang your mint in somewhere like a closet, which doesn’t get good ventilation. If you don’t have space in your house that is dark, you can put a paper bag over the mint. Attach it loosely around the mint so there is room for it to breathe.

After a couple of weeks, the mint will be dry. Take down the mint and remove the leaves from the stems.
Once you have those dry leaves, you can use them for tea!

Drying mint leaves in the oven

If you are looking for a fast and easy way to dry mint leaves, you can use an oven.

  • Preheat the oven to around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. If your oven does not go this low, just put it to the lowest setting available. A higher temperature will dry mint quicker, but it will also have less flavor.
  • Place the mint or mint leaves on a baking sheet. Make sure that there is space between each stalk of the mint.
  • After five minutes, turn the oven heat off but leave the mint in the oven to continue drying. This is done to dry the mint at a cooler temperature so that it keeps more of its flavor.
  • It could take up to 20 minutes to dry mint in the oven. Make sure that you stay by the oven and watch the mint to make sure that it doesn’t burn.

This method is fast and easy, but if your oven doesn’t have low temperatures you might be better off air-drying the mint so that it doesn’t lose flavor.

Drying mint leaves with a dehydrator

If you have a dehydrator, using it is a very easy way to get mint dried quickly.

  • Spread mint leaves out on the dehydrator tray. Make sure that you leave some space in between each leaf, and only lay them out in one layer.
  • Set the dehydrator to its lowest setting. This way, the mint will keep the most amount of flavor possible.
  • Drying times may vary from 1 to 4 hours.

Check the progress of the mint every few minutes. Since mint is thin, it can very easily get overcooked in a dehydrator. When the mint is crispy but still green, it is dry.

As you see, drying mint leaves for tea is an easy-to-do task. I wish you good experimentation and enjoy the mint tea:)

READ ALSO: A Complete Guide on How to Store Dried Herbs