Homemade Green Powder

Let Sayward of Bonzai Aphrodite illuminate the mysterious process of making your very own green powder! It is easier then you might imagine and can be an awesome idea for those of us with gardens which have a tendency of producing an abundance of certain vegetables at certain times. How can one ever utilize all that abundance at once? Well, one option is to dehydrate those yummy greens at a low temperature to preserve their vital nutrients, and then grind into a fine powder. Add this to smoothies, soups, or juices all year long for a serious green power nutritional boost.

Ingredients

Greens, greens and more greens!

Try swiss chard, spinach, collards, dandelion, wild nettles, etc.

Instructions

1) Procure a large quantity of fresh, local, organic greens (like spinach, collards, chard, dandelion, etc). And I do mean large.

2) Wash and de-rib the leaves. Lay them out flat on dehydrator trays (for a raw powder) or baking sheets (for oven, non raw). Set your dehydrator at 115º and allow to run overnight, or until leaves are completely dried (up to 12 hours). Alternately, you can set your oven at the lowest temperature and use that, but I haven’t tested this method so you’ll have to keep an eye on the timing. Just remember, you’re aiming to pull the moisture out – not to actually cook them. So keep the setting low!

3) Next, you’ll need to grind your greens into powder. I like to use an electric coffee grinder which I reserve for things like flax, dried coconut, and other caffeine-free culinary specimens. You could also use a spice grinder, a mortar and pestle, or a food processor. But this is a LOT of product to work through, and you want to get as fine a powder as possible, so a coffee grinder really fits the bill.

4) Grind grind grind in batches, until voila! You’ve saved a few months worth of greens.

Notes

I had to repeat this entire process four times, and it still barely yielded a couple cups of powder (and I have a 9-tray dehydrator!). But that means this is incredibly concentrated green nutrition. Use it as you’d use any other green powder – for me that means a lot of smoothies. A little bit goes a long way!