Drying and Preserving Fresh Cilantro in the Oven

I recently tried my hand at preserving my garden’s huge abundance of cilantro by drying out the fresh cilantro in the oven. A lot of my cilantro was beginning to bolt with the warmer weather so I knew that time was running out to use up the cilantro. Just look at all this harvest!

Although this looks like a ton of cilantro, it really was not all usable. Because it was beginning to bolt, there were some smaller leaves that look like dill at the top of the plant that are going to be more bitter. I instead focused on the leaves at the bottom of the plant that are larger.

I looked at a bunch of different resources to figure out how to do this such as this article from All Recipes and this one from Caitey Jay.

@saraannsutton Harvesting and drying all of the cilantro in my garden 👩‍🌾🌱 #gardening #cooking ♬ Sunday – HNNY

Did you know that some people have a gene in their DNA that makes cilantro taste like soap to them! Thankfully, I don’t have that gene, it would be so sad to not be able to fully enjoy so many dishes at Mexican restaurants!

I am just storing mine in a mason jar with a sealed lid in my spice cabinet so that it isn’t exposed to light. I dried out this cilantro about a month ago in may and used it the other day when making a corn and black bean salad and it was PERFECT! Because the salad I used it in marinates for a few hours, the dried cilantro seemed to suck up the oil and juice, so it ended up being a perfect way to use it! I bet it also would be great in my cilantro-lime chicken thighs recipe to sub out fresh cilantro!

From what I read about drying cilantro, it should be shelf stable for 6 months if done properly but I plan to use mine within a few months of use. The longer you wait to use it, the less flavor it will have, which is why I want to use it relatively quickly.