What is Dill? How to harvest, use fresh, dry, and preserve!
If you are here to learn how to harvest, use fresh, dry, and preserve dill, well, you are in the right place! The next two paragraphs are history alone. Feel free to scroll past for information!
The celery family Apiaceae includes the star of today’s blog; Dill! It is the only species in the genus Anethum. Dill is grown widely in Eurasia where its leaves and seeds are used as a herb or spice for flavoring food.
A biennial warm-season herb, dill is very sensitive to light-freezes and frost. Dill is not technically a perennial plant, because a single plant only lives 2 years. It is quite proficient at self-seeding (if allowed). If grown naturally, a single dill plant should come back year after year.
Best Uses For Fresh Dill
So you have done your harvest and now it’s time to either use fresh, dry, or preserve your dill – how exciting! Here are a few of our favorite ways to utilize fresh dill.
1. Add to potatoes: Dill complements potato dishes tremendously. Add fresh dill to any potato dish! We love Pan Fried Potatoes done simply with sea salt, ground pepper, olive oil, and finished with a healthy dose of freshly harvested and chopped dill. YUM!
2. Garnish seafood: Use fresh dill leaves to garnish salmon, trout, or cod. If you’re making a sauce, mix dill seeds with other ingredients that are common of seafood, such as lemon juice, chives, salt, and mustard.
3. Rice dishes: A rice pilaf can benefit from a healthy portion of dill. Incorporate dill into an entree of lamb served over a bed of rice. Finely chop up dill with garlic, onions, and mint to give a strong flavor to the meat.
4. Flavor yogurt or cream cheese: Dill and cucumber are key ingredients to making tzatziki sauce, which goes great on gyros, omelets, and salads. For another take, add dill to cream cheese to create a refreshing bagel schmear. For something even simpler, just add dill to plain yogurt to give it an extra kick of flavor.
5. Quick pickle: Last but not least, one of our favorite uses for dill involves our Quick Pickle recipe. Ideal for pickles, pickled jalapeno, pickled garlic cloves, and pickled hard-boiled eggs, you really cannot go wrong adding fresh or dried dill!
How to Harvest Dill
We can’t even begin to use fresh, dry, or preserve our dill if we do not know when to harvest now can we?! So, how do you know when to harvest dill? Dill leaves should be harvested before the plant comes into flower. If you’re not collecting the seeds, snip the flower heads off so you can continue to pluck the leaves. Snip the leaves directly from the plant and then chop before adding to your recipe to release the flavor. We have found that you can enjoy dill longer by harvesting regularly so be prepared to use dill in every dish for a few weeks as well as have dill drying everywhere!
When to Harvest Dill
The question of how to harvest dill doesn’t really matter if we don’t know when! Dill should be sown outdoors in direct sunlight when the average temperature is consistently between 60-70 degrees minimum each day. It can grow in temperatures up to 90 degrees on some days but its ideal temperature is 70. We find that it is best to keep an eye on the forecast and to start harvesting dill when temperatures start climbing into the 80s.
How to Dry and Preserve Dill
Whether you grow your own dill or buy your dill fresh at a farmer’s market or grocery store, you’ll find that it wilts very quickly. Fortunately, you can use, dry, or preserve dill in a number of ways that will provide that fresh dill taste whenever you need it in cooking.
If you don’t have room in the freezer for a full container of dill, you can also store it as a dried, ground herb. This is a convenient way to add the herb to a variety of food dishes and it is similar to how you might dry and preserve other herbs, such as basil and oregano.
However, if you have a large dill harvest, you might consider both using both freezing and drying methods to give yourself options when cooking.
You will need:
- Fresh dill sprigs
- Large bowl
- Glass jar with a tight-sealing lid
How to dry fresh dill:
- Allow the dill sprigs to hang upside down in bundles for about 1 to 2 weeks. When the herb becomes crispy and crumbles when you pinch it, it is ready for storage.
- Working over a large bowl, crumble the leaves from the stem and into the bowl. It should be a quick task; if the dill is dry enough, you can grind it very fine using just your hands.
- Once the dill is ground to your liking, place the dry dill in a glass jar with a tight-sealing lid.
As with most dried herbs, dill will remain flavorful for about a year.
*For use within a week or so, you can simply harvest your dill and place in a glass of water making sure that the base of the stocks remains wet at all times. Ideal for use within one week!
Thank you so much for reading! If you have an appetite for recipes using herbs, check out a few of our other family favorites! Want to learn more? See below!
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