The Best Way to Dry Parsley to Preserve Flavor and Aroma

Question: I am a retired chemist and enjoy cooking, a domestic type of chemistry. I have a healthy crop of parsley that will shortly bolt in the warm weather. Can you tell me the best way to dry parsley to conserve its color and aroma?

Answer: In “How to Dry Foods” (HP Books: 1979), author Deanna DeLong recommends drying parsley “at lower temperatures so the flavoring oils and vitamins are not destroyed. Use fresh, curly leaved bright green parsley. Before processing, store in a plastic bag at refrigerator temperature, 35 to 40 degrees, to maintain the highest quality.

“Wash lightly under cold running water. Separate clusters and discard long or tough stems.” Dry on racks in a very cool oven, 90 to 120 degrees, with the door open, until the parsley feels like paper.

DeLong notes that “dried parsley will readily reabsorb moisture from the air, so it must be packaged extremely well.” She also advises, “When cutting parsley, always remove the outer leaves rather than the inner leaves, as growth is from the center.”

Q: Please describe in your column how to make sweet milk out of sour milk to bake a cake.

A: We hope you mean the opposite--how to make sour milk from sweet milk. It’s possible to do that by adding one tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice to enough sweet milk to equal one cup and letting the mixture stand five minutes. We don’t know any way of turning sour milk into sweet.