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iloveschiaparelli · 7 months ago

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Harvesting & Processing Basil

Finally! The long-awaited basil post! I wanted to wait until the process was completely finished before putting this together. I deeeefinitely made some mistakes, as you will soon realize.

Part I (October 9): Harvesting the Leaves

I didn't take a picture directly before the harvest, so these ones from 12 days prior must suffice. This is more or less what I started with:

As you can see, it's a fairly healthy plant, albeit smaller than you might expect. My first attempt at basil died in July, and was replaced in August with a cutting from someone else's plant that was being given away on the local freecyling facebook group. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it the cutting had roots, so I planted it and this is what it became in ~ 2 months.

I wasn't originally planning to harvest on any particular day. It was more like I just, on a whim when I got home for the day, grabbed some kitchen scissors and went outside to cut some leaves. I was originally only planning to take a few, leaving some to grow. That was, until I discovered that the plant was flowering. If you don't know already what basil looks like when it flowers, here are some pictures! If you don't know, basil dies after it flowers. (At least that's what I've been told) So when i saw this, I knew I had to go ahead and harvest the whole thing. There is also a photo at the end of the flower/seed pods that are precursors to the flower. I had never understood how the ends of basil look different when they're growing new leaves vs. about to flower until I saw this. Now I know what to look for.

I was texting a boy basically the entire day while harvesting, so it took several hours longer than it needed to, because I kept pausing to type on my phone. I went out at like, 3pm, and finished + came inside around 6-7pm. Yes, we are dating now.

This is what it looked like at the halfway point, when I was just laying all the stems in a pile and collecting small leaves in the strainer:

That is when I realized it was hubris to have such a small vessel, so I grabbed a large mixing bowl from inside.

This is what the plant and both bowl & strainer looked like when I finished picking off of the main plant:

I was... shocked, haha. I did not expect the stems to have so much volume when picked. As you can see, I left some leaves at the end of the plant where there were flowers, so that I could enjoy them for a while longer until they withered. Also left some "undesirable" (by me) leaves behind on the woody stems.

The next step was to separate the leaves from the stems. Remember, I was winging this whole process and not thinking ahead. Otherwise, I might have been pulling off the individual leaves from the start. I got this setup, with a paper towel for a working space, and a slightly smaller mixing bowl as the receptacle for stripped leaves. I used bag clips and the weight of the bowls to prevent the paper towel from blowing away:

For the most part, I just relied on my fingernails to cleanly break the leaves from the stems, then threw the stems to the back of the paper towel and the leaves into the bowl. I only had to use the scissors a few times, especially for cutting off pieces of leaves where bugs had begun to eat them, or they were extremely yellow, but I wanted to still use the green part. Here are some process photos, including a couple of tiny heart-shaped leaves. There's also one leaf where, when I cut it, just the clear strip of cellulose remained where the rest of the leaf had been, and I thought it was cool that I could see through it.

When i was done, I threw the stems back into the planter. With the stems removed, everything fit in the smaller mixing bowl just fine. Since the basil was in the planter for only ~2 months, the plan is to remove the roots and re-use the dirt for something else (like giving more space to + propagating my African Violet! Which is something I've been wanting to try lately. I already saved an egg carton to potentially use for starting the leaves.

Part II (October 10): Washing & Drying the Leaves

I was going to wash the leaves and lay them out to dry on the same day, as I believe is recommended, but I got lazy LOL. So I returned the following day. I started by putting leaves in the strainer and rinsing them under the faucet, but quickly realized that that was going to be annoying and take forever. I finally decided that the most efficient course of action was just to fill the bowl with water so that everything got soaked. I used warm water, with no solution or vinegar or anything added.

I got an extra large baking sheet and put down a paper towel on it. I had just begun pulling leaves out of the water and laying them out on the paper towel when I realized that this was too much water involved. I fixed the issue (somewhat) by pouring all the wet leaves into the strainer and shaking it gently to remove as much moisture as I safely could, then set it down to let it continue to drip down into the bowl while I worked. Setup A vs B:

Although I started off trying to make sure everything was evenly spaced, I had roughly 14 layers of paper towels to put down so I eventually faded into chaos, as every ADHD gardener is wont to do. Some vague asf process photos & what the stacks looked like:

I let it sit for a few hours while I cleaned out my food dehydrator. Now, this is the part where I Completely forgot to be taking process photos, so Unfortunately, I don't even have any pictures of the dehydrator to share, except for this product photo of the model that I was using:

I laid out all of the still-slightly-damp leaves in all of the trays, trying to keep them evenly spaced and not overlapping but (kind of) failing. Then I shelved it to wait overnight for the leaves to air-dry. Had I been doing this properly, I would have let the leaves sit on the paper towels, in a single layer, instead of stacked up or in the dehydrator the way I did.

Part III (Several Day Period Oh My God): Dehydrating the Leaves

It is utterly embarrassing how difficult it was to get these leaves dry. The recommended temperature for basil/herbs is 95 degrees Farenheit, for 12-24 hours for basil. I started off at the lowest dehydrator setting, 100F, for 13 hours and started it overnight.

In the morning, two of my three roommates were complaining about the smell and asked me to move it outside to the porch (direct sunlight) I obliged, and seeing as the basil was still thoroughly damp, added another 6 hours on.

Then I forgot it overnight again. *sigh*

I brought it back inside and realized that all of the leaves on the top were brown (albeit mostly dry), but many of the leaves at the bottom were still wet. This is when I posted my cry for help on Tumblr dot com, and was told to not put them outside again.

Unsure what to do and overwhelmed by other tasks, I pretty much gave up. I ran it for roughly 12 more hours indoors a day or two later as a last-ditch effort, but didn't check it right away.

October 22nd was the day I finally took the time to check the leaves and I was immensely and pleasantly surprised to find that almost all of the leaves were dry! I knew that it had likely been exposed to moisture in the powered-off dehydrator, so I ran it for 2 hours just to get rid of any atmospheric moisture and then set to work on grinding it up.

Part IV (October 22): Processing the Dried Leaves

This was, honestly, the second-most-fun part of the process immediately after the harvest. It was a little bit tedious, but I still enjoyed it. It's also when I started taking pictures again.

First of all, I spilled several leaves onto the floor while trying to empty the trays into a small metal mixing bowl that I was using to collect the dried leaves. Unfortunately, they had to be swept away because our kitchen floor is dirty.

A week or two earlier, I had washed out an Old Bay seasoning container, anticipating putting ground basil in it. I know that whole leaves preserve the flavor better, but I am working with what I can here!!! This is what worked best for me this time. My roommate Lilly has a tiny asf mortar & pestle that she allowed me to use, so I washed it out. I grabbed a funnel for the Old Bay shaker, and set up shop at a foldout table right in the middle of the kitchen floor. I put on the podcast that I'm currently working through, a Behind the Bastards miniseries titled Behind the Police. It was released in summer of 2020 and is all about the history of the institution of police in the USA. Super interesting.

This was the setup:

So, the way I did this was, I would gather a few leaves at a time into the mortar & pestle, grind it up in a circular motion, and then pour the ground basil into the funnel and the Old Bay container. Pretty simple and straightforward.

A few leaves in the bowl were still damp/limp, and wouldn't crumble in the mortar & pestle. I just removed them as I went. I included the brown leaves from the top tray because, at this point, I was just happy that I wouldn't have to throw everything away.

This is what it all looked like when I was done! As you can see, only a few leaves had to be removed.

Part V: Conclusion & What I've Learned

It's absolutely incredible to me how much those leaves at the start reduced, until they only filled a tiny handheld bottle!!! Yes, that is ALL of the leaves!! To drive home how insane this is, here is a side-by-side of the initial harvest of leaves-only, and the bottle that it filled at the end:

Just crazy! It's a bit hard to comprehend the scale from these pictures, honestly.

From there, it was just cleanup and storing the dehydrator, then writing BASIL

basil BAsil. BASIL

BASIL. BASIL

all over the Old Bay container so that it wouldn't be mistaken.

The plan if i didn't have enough room in the bottle was to portion out & give away bags of whole leaves at the punk rock market, like I've been doing with zines (oh! that's something I haven't posted about!). I was slightly disappointed that I didn't have enough, to be honest

Going through this process has given me an insane amount of increased respect to spice harvesters both currently in the spice world, and throughout history. It's a LOT of work to harvest & process just one bottle of basil! It's like that one post talking about how our ancestors are probably proud of us, or at least happy for us, to be surrounded by spices and luxuries that previously were only available to the rich and powerful.

Also as someone with Indian heritage, which is known for its spices LOL, this honestly felt like it connected me a little bit with that culture that I wasn't raised in. Not in any crazy metaphorical way, just coming to appreciate the process and work that goes into spice production, in a way that I wasn't able to before going through this process. The significance of spices carries more weight for me now.

I don't think I'll be able to use all of this basil before next year. I honestly don't even cook with dried basil that often, it's just nice to have fresh basil. What I might do is manage a plant again next year, for the gardening experience, then just straight-up give away fresh & dried basil at the market like I was originally planning to this time. I could plan it a little bit better, though, to ensure that I can feel confident in the quality.

8/10 enjoyment. Tedious & frustrating at times, but ultimately very rewarding, and mostly fun! This is the first, and likely only, harvest I've had this year in 2024. I look forward to expanding next year!!! I can't wait to see what I'll grow then. Time to start planning, I guess!

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