Actually very easy

Dried mint

The beliefHerbs are assumed to be dried in the sun, and heat to improve the drying.

The truthThe opposite is true. The oils that carry the aroma are volatile: shade and moving air are what you want, while sun and heat drive them off.

Ten minutes of work, a week of drying

How to make it

What you need

Several bunches of fresh mint
String, and a shaded, airy place
A sealed glass jar

How the engine read this list (1 lines)

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Fresh mint

mint

An empty weight means that line could not be turned into grams — either the amount is open ("to taste") or the ingredient has no record here. Neither enters the sum as zero; they do not enter it at all.

Pick or buy the mint in the morning, once the dew has lifted: the volatile oil content is highest then.
Wash it if you must, but dry it thoroughly at once: leaves left wet blacken and mould before they dry.
Tie it into small bunches and hang them upside down. Keep the bunches thin: thick ones get no air inside and mould from within.
Leave them a week somewhere shaded with moving air — never in sun or above a radiator, both of which drive the aroma off.
When the leaves crumble between your fingers, strip them from the stalks, crush them by hand and jar them. Do not grind to powder: powdered mint loses its aroma far faster.

Why it works

Mint’s smell comes from volatile oils, chiefly menthol and menthone. "Volatile" is a scientific description here: these molecules evaporate even at room temperature and disappear far faster as it warms. The point of drying is to remove water, not aroma, so good drying has to be slow and cool enough to take the water while leaving the oil. Above 35 °C the loss of volatile oil rises sharply, and in sun there is ultraviolet as well, which breaks down the chlorophyll — the straw colour of badly dried mint is exactly that, and losing the colour signals losing the aroma. Well-dried mint stays greenish. Timing matters too: the volatile oil content peaks just before flowering, in the morning once the dew has lifted.

Diets it qualifies for

Gluten-free Vegan Vegetarian Lactose-free

Storage & shelf life

How long it keeps

Whole leaves, sealed jar, in the dark: 1 year
Crumbled: 6 months
Ground to powder: 3 months
Clear jar in the light: 3 months, and the aroma fades

With dried herbs, spoilage is usually the wrong question: mint is still safe after a year, it simply has no aroma left. What sets its life is surface area — whole leaves last longest, powder shortest, because volatile oil escapes from the surface. So mint is stored whole and crumbled at the moment of use. Light and heat push the same way: a jar on the shelf above the hob spends a year’s aroma in six months.

When to bin it Mould, a cellar smell or clumping in the jar mean it goes: all three say the moisture never fell far enough. Mint that has simply lost its smell is harmless but adds nothing, and is better replaced.

History

Where it comes from

Mint is one of the signature aromatics of Anatolian cooking, and the dried form is used more than the fresh — in soups, in mantı, in ayran, in cacık. A common confusion is worth correcting: the dried mint of Turkish cooking is usually *Mentha spicata*, spearmint, and not *Mentha × piperita*, peppermint. They carry different molecules — peppermint is far richer in menthol and gives that sharp, cooling taste, while spearmint is softer and sweeter. When a recipe says dried mint, what it wants is spearmint, not the flavour of a mint sweet.

The knack

Keep the stalks: boiled for tea they are less aromatic than the leaves, but nothing is wasted.
Make sure it is bone dry before it goes into the jar. If the glass fogs, moisture remains: take it out and dry it two more days.
Rub it in your palm before use: friction breaks the cell walls and frees the volatile oil, and the same mint smells markedly stronger.

The pantry