10/03/2026
Grinding dried lemon myrtle leaves for cooking.
Pick fresh tips from tree, that are clean & have no sign of mildew/ rust.
I dried these straight from picking them off the tree where I do Zumba dance every week thre is a beautiful mature tree there & put them in the back windows of my car in a basket while it is parked in the carport. Sometimes I dry them in a basket on the kitchen bench.
Best flavour comes from the fresh dried leaves, but you can also store them for later in an air tight container.
I use a coffee grinder. There is a lot of care in preparing the leaves, separating them from the stems, making sure the leaves are clean & healthy ones used only, taking out the stem & spine of the leaf, the leaf ends up in 2 halves & the stems are discarded. Check out the pictures, I fill the coffee grinder with the leaf halves, & grind away, 1st pick of ground leaves shows that more grinding is needed to make it into a fine powder, the smell is intense & so beautiful!!
Keep grinding, the noise of grinding by then will sound even & no chunky bits are being chopped up.
Voile!! At the end photo you have beautifully ground up powder to put in your cooking !!
Lemon myrtle is great in so many foods - pasta, pop corn, cheesecake, ice cream, short bread biscuits ( mmm with macadamia nuts) bush punch drink.... you name it keep inventing !!!
Anyway, that's how I do it :) Milly
