We had a lot of sage in our garden plot this year. Despite regular use all season, we had quite a bit left before the first frost. We decided to dry it and grind it up for the herb rack, which we’d never done before.

Here is one of the many sprigs we picked:

Step 1: Remove the leaves from the stems.

Step 2: Rinse off the dirt.

Step 3: Pat the leaves dry with paper towels.

Step 4: Dry the leaves.

We used a dehydrator that I received for Christmas a few years ago. You can also dry them on a cookie sheet in the oven.

Before:

After. They lose quite a bit of volume!

Step 5: Turn into powder.

I suppose you could use a spice grinder for this step, but we don’t have one, and I don’t want my coffee tasting like sage for the next week, so I’m not using my coffee grinder. Amanda had the idea to grate it against a mesh strainer, which worked great!

After about 20 minutes of patient grating by Amanda, we had quite a bit of sage powder: