More Homemade Seasonings

After my stint of garlic powder making, I was totally hooked on making our own seasonings. Never mind that most of our garlic powder now comes from China (and this writer makes some interesting observations about that); the color, smell and flavor of freshly made seasonings is out of this world. This only matters if (a) you like to eat good tasting food and (b) you’re concerned about what’s in the food you’re eating…and I happen to care about both.

So I decided to make onion powder in the same manner.

These are the onions from my garden that I started out with. And no, that’s not just the photo making them look small. My hens got into my garden last summer and scratched them all up! I supplemented them for this project with some organic yellow onions from the market, which I bought for 98 cents a pound. I know I could have save two dimes a pound by not buying organic, but seriously, what is the point of that? I figure I can find that much change in the parking lot if I looked for it. I can’t remember exactly, but I probably used around five other large onions.

It took a while to peel these itty bitty things, but I did not want them to go to waste! I just picked at it whenever I was in the kitchen, 10 minutes here and there. Sometimes, that’s just how things get done.

I wasn’t about to chop them all by hand, however, and just pulsed them a bit in the food processor.

It took around 16 hours to dehydrate them at 145 degrees. And yes, everyone in the vicinity of the dehydrator for the first few hours got very, very weepy! Soon the whole house smelled like onions. I didn’t care. I figured it was all good cleansing for the respiratory system (ha).

After the pieces were brittle, I put them into the processor again and ran it until it was powdered. I had to watch for the cloud of dust that needed to settle before popping the lid off. Then, I put the whole batch through a sieve.

See all of those larger pieces of onion left in the sieve? That’s what you call “MINCED onion.” (oooooo….don’t you love it when you *get* what food really is outside of the packaged store stuff?) I ended up with a full jar of onion powder and about a third of minced onion. It looks and smells outstanding! The powder from the store looks awfully sorry next to it.

My pantry now has fresh dried herbs of all sorts, mostly from the garden: oregano, thyme, savory, tarragon, lemon thyme, sage, garlic, red pepper and now onion. I had so much of it all that I decided it would be fun to make my own Italian seasoning mix. I didn’t have any dried basil or parsley on hand (next summer, Lord willing), so I bought some organic basil and parsley from the market and dehydrated it all.

Take a look at this parsley. I sure wish the photo was better:

On the left is my freshly dried parsley (not grown in China). It is a brilliant dark green, smells intense, and is still curly. The store bought on the right is a faded light green and brown, and is in these weird flat square pieces.

Anyhow, I got a recipe for Italian Seasoning online and mixed it all up. Other than the pepper, everything else was dehydrated in the kitchen. In case you’re wondering, I use an Excalibur Dehydrator. I love it! If you know someone who has one collecting dust in their garage, I bet you could very nicely ask them if they’d take $20 for it. They are also a find in garage sales.

This is my Italian Seasoning mix. It looks beautiful, and if I could make a scratch and smell onto your computer, I would. I’ve really had fun with this.