How to Dry Mint Leaves (FOUR Easy Methods)

If you want to enjoy mint all year long, you must preserve it when it’s young and fresh. Drying mint is the best way since it leaves the essential oils intact and can be incredibly simple. Here are four easy ways to dry mint leaves, including on drying racks, in the oven, in the food dehydrator, and in the microwave. You can use the methods for other leafy herbs, such as basil, parsley, and catnip.

My mint grows from March to October, but after that, each dozen or so plants die back for the winter. That means I have two options to keep myself stocked up in mint over the cold months. Bring some of them inside to grow, or you can dry mint leaves to use until they start re-growing in spring. I usually choose the latter because it’s easy, and once dried and stored, mint has a shelf-life of at least a year. Perfect for making fresh mugs of peppermint tea, food recipes, and handmade soap.

But why dry mint at all? Carefully drying herbs can preserve the taste, color, and essential oils from the plant for months to come. Once dried, mint can last for at least a year in the cupboard, and you can use it in mint tea, herbal oils, food recipes, and skincare. The methods I share for drying mint apply to other leafy herbs, too. So, if you have a garden filled with lemon balm, basil, and parsley, you can dry them similarly.

When to Harvest Mint Leaves

The first step to drying mint is harvesting it. You can dry any variety of mint, and aside from Eau de Cologne mint, any type can be used to make tea or in cooking. Some varieties are better, though. I tend to dry peppermint, spearmint, chocolate mint, and strawberry mint. There are dozens of different types of mint to grow, and collecting them is one of my hobbies. One of the most unusual I’ve come across is ginger mint, and a new one I’ve added to the collection is blackcurrant mint. Both smell exactly as you would imagine!

As far as harvesting, cut mint anytime during the growing months, but try to aim for when it’s looking its best in late spring to early summer. The volatile oils (flavor!) will be at their highest just before the flowers bloom. The time of day matters, too. Try to pick mint on a calm, sunny day in the late morning. That’s usually before the sun can evaporate away essential oils.

If your mint looks tired or scruffy, it won’t be the best for drying. That’s alright, though, because if you have enough of a growing season left, you can cut it down to an inch from the ground and let the plant regrow. Within weeks, you’ll have plenty of fresh green leaves to dry. You can do this several times over the spring and summer, and mint will happily rebound to give you even more aromatic leaves.

Cleaning Mint Before Drying

You can dry mint without washing it if you grew it yourself organically and you’re sure it’s clean. Do check it over for insects, though. If you’ve purchased your mint or are unsure, rinse it before drying it. The best way to do this is to submerge the mint in cold water, gently swirl it around, then take it out to drain. You can pat it dry with a tea towel or leave it spread out to dry off a bit. It’s better not to leave mint to dry in direct sunlight, though. It can scorch and zap the leaves of flavor, color, nutrients, and volatile oils.

How to Dry Mint Leaves

The traditional way to dry mint is by air drying it. Allowing moisture to be stripped from the leaves by natural evaporation. It leaves the essential oils in the leaves but takes the water out so that it can be stored. There are two main ways to air-dry mint. You can tie small bunches with string and hang them upside down in a warmish, dry, dim, and airy place. It could be inside or on a protected porch. To keep dried leaves from scattering on the floor below, loosely tie a paper bag over the bunch. It’ll catch any bits that fall, so they won’t make a mess and won’t go to waste.

Another way to air-dry herbs is to use a drying rack. There are many types out there, including ones that you can DIY and ones that you can buy. I have a small tabletop rack that’s great for drying small amounts of mint. I lightly spread the mint on it, stems and all, and leave it there to dry. If the room is warm enough, it usually takes a week to dry. Again, I place it in a dim or dark place during that time. Sunlight fades mint leaves and can impact their flavor.

My favorite drying rack is one that I bought only this year. It’s an inexpensive mesh rack that I suspended from the ceiling in my workroom. With eight shelves, I can dry many different types of mint at a time, along with other herbs like calendula. It also takes about a week for herbs to completely air dry.

How to Dry Mint in a Food Dehydrator

When it’s too cool or humid to use a drying rack, or if I need to dry them quickly, I use a food dehydrator. It’s great for drying mint, basil, other herbs, and fruit and veggies, especially those with high water content. It’s also reliable and easy, and the temperature can be adjusted and monitored. The only downside is that you need to buy a food dehydrator (or borrow one), and they use electricity. Not a huge amount, though.

To use this method, clean the mint as instructed further above. Next, lay the mint sparsely in a single layer on each dehydrator tray and dry the mint at 40°C/105°F for three to five hours or until the leaves are brittle and crumble when rolled between your fingers.

You can either pluck the leaves from the stems or dry the leaves on the stems if that’s more convenient for you. However, drying the leaves on the stem can increase the drying time. Also, it’s best to remove the leaves from the stems for storage, so either pluck them before drying or pull them from them afterward. Allow the mint to cool down before you store the leaves in jars or plastic bags. Residual heat can cause condensation in the jars, spoiling the mint.

Dry Mint in the Microwave

A quick and easy way to dry mint is one that I’d not considered until recently. Though you can’t dry a lot of mint at a time using a microwave, it can come in handy for small amounts. All you do is spread clean, dry mint leaves on a plate so they’re not touching. Microwave on a low setting for ten-second intervals until they are crispy-dry. It took a minute and twenty seconds for the mint leaves you see in the photos to dry completely.

How to Oven Dry Mint

The first three methods of drying mint are very easy but require either a food dehydrator, a microwave, or an environment where mint will air-dry quickly. What if you don’t have those and want to dry a bunch now? Fortunately, another method doesn’t require specialist equipment and is quick, too. You can dry mint in the oven.

Once the mint is rinsed and dried, pluck the leaves from the stems and lay them in a thin layer over a lined baking tray or cookie sheet. Dry them in the oven at 40°C/105°F until you’re sure it’s completely dry. Turn the leaves every half an hour or so and keep the oven door wedged open a crack so that moisture can escape. A tea towel or pot holder can help keep it open.

Oven-drying mint will take just as long as drying it in a food dehydrator. Drying large amounts of mint at a time can take even longer. So there’s an electricity cost included here, but it does work a treat! If you use this method, I recommend avoiding drying large piles of mint at a time since it will take so much longer to dry. The herb’s scent and flavor can be impacted, too.

How to Store Dried Mint

High-quality dried mint is still green, and its scent and flavor will be very minty. That’s in contrast to poor-quality mint, which is brown to black and has less scent or none at all. Unfortunately, this tends to happen when mint takes too long to dry or is heated at too high a temperature. Only store high-quality mint since inferior herbal material will only get worse in storage.

When your quality dried mint is bone dry and at room temperature, you can store it in airtight containers. I tend to use glass jars, but I also use ziplock bags to save space. Whichever container you use, make sure that the leaves are perfectly dry. Any moisture in the leaves can cause the mint to mold and spoil the rest.

Another thing, don’t be tempted to crumble the leaves up before storing them. That releases the essential oils and allows them to evaporate away. Instead, store whole dried mint leaves in an airtight container in a dark place at room temperature. If you do that, your dried mint will have a shelf-life of at least a year but up to two. After that, it tends to lose its flavor and color. Also, know that mint leaves will dry into a fraction of the size you began with. Plan to use a container that’s a quarter to one-eighth the size of the mint when fresh.

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Lastly, if drying mint seems like too much trouble you can also freeze it. A good friend of mine buys bunches of peppermint at the farmers market, pops it in the freezer, and takes handfuls out when she makes mint tea. She puts the frozen mint in a mug, pours over scalding hot water and allows it to steep. It’s an incredibly easy way to preserve mint for fresh peppermint tea!