I had always seen Home made Dry Mint Powder in my mom’s spice collection in the kitchen. My mother used to prepare this powder from freshly plucked mint leaves from our kitchen garden. We used to grow mint leaves in a big area that provided us with many leaves enabling us to prepare home made dry mint powder for the whole year.
Mint is a wonderful aromatic herb and is not at all difficult to grow in your kitchen garden or pots. We can use fresh mint leaves to prepare dry mint powder. Dry mint powder adds excellent flavor to summer drinks like Kachhi keiri ka pana/panna (raw mango beverage), lemon juice, butter milk, water melon juice etc. It can be added in plain curd or any raita.
While drying fresh mint leaves for powder, never dry them directly under the Sun’s heat. Heat kills the aroma of the leaves – so always dry them in a shadowed place. In case of rain, we can dry them in microwave or oven too.
Ingredients :
Fresh mint leaves
Process :
Pluck out fresh leaves of mint from the stems and wash them with running water.
Let them stay in the sieve till the water dries out completely.
Later, spread these leaves on a newspaper or dry cloth to dry out.
Don’t keep these leaves under the direct heat of Sun as that will diminish the flavor of mint. You can keep them under the fan. In the heat of summer, leaves will dry out inside the house too. Leaves will shrink in a day or two, their colour will change and they will look like this…
Now keep them in a broad bowl and let them dry till they become crispy dry.
Rub dry mint leaves with your palms or grind them in a mixer.
Home made Dry Mint Powder is ready to use!!
As no moisture is left in the leaves, these can be easily stored in an air tight container.
