By Cheryle Jones Syracuse, MS, Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University

Pantry or Garden?

It can be tough to source all the herbs and spices that you’re used to being able to get from the grocery store, especially with unexpected shortages or earnest but misinformed replacements for items that are out of stock. But did you know that you can often substitute fresh herbs for dried and vice versa?

So whether your container garden is overproducing, your dried herbs were unexpectedly out of stock, or your fresh herbs went bad before you could use them, remember that you can make some strategic switches:

• When using herbs in a recipe the ratio is usually 3:1 fresh to dried.

If a recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of fresh herbs, you can use just 1 tablespoon of dry herbs. Or if the recipe calls for a teaspoon of dried herbs, replace that with three teaspoons of your fresh, chopped variety.

How to Dry Your Herbs:

If you’ve harvested or ordered more herbs than you can use right away, you might want to try drying them! Here are some ways you can do that…

1. In some locations you can dry herbs simply by leaving them in a well-ventilated area until the moisture evaporates. This approach works great when you only have a small amount.
2. To dry herbs in a microwave, wash and place them on a paper towel in the microwave oven.

• All the instructions I’ve read said if you have a 1000 watt or higher microwave it just has too much power and will burn the herbs (and possibly the paper towels, too).
• To avoid this, I used just 50% power in my 1200 watt microwave doing just doing 30 seconds at a time for about 2-3 minutes.
• My herbs weren’t completely dry when I took them out, but they then continued to dry on the counter.

Do be careful when doing this — don’t leave the kitchen and go slowly (because of the small amount of dry food in the microwave there is a risk of fire)

Basic Herb Vinaigrette