Make Rubbed Sage

One of the great Thanksgiving traditions is turkey and dressing. In the South, we don’t do stuffing….we do dressing. Dressing made from cornbread…..cornbread made from yellow cornmeal – not sweet cornbread either.

One of the main ingredients of dressing (other than the cornbread of course) is rubbed sage. Rubbed sage, is basically sage crumbled very fine so that it will distributed quite evenly throughout the dish.

Since I have a huge sage bush in the garden that could use a good trimming (see the before (1st) and after (2nd) photo); I decided to make my own this year.
 

Here’s how it’s made:

Step 1
Harvest your sage. You shouldn’t harvest more than 1/3rd of the plant at a time. You can wash down your sage bush the day before you plan to harvest. This should get rid of any bugs or dirt that may be on it.


Step 2
Dry your sage. You can air dry it or dry it in a dehydrator. I used a dehydrator. Sage is a low moisture herb, so it doesn’t take long to dry. I dried it for about two hours.

Actually I split my harvest into two. I dried half of it in the dehydrator and the other half is air drying. I just want to see if there is a visible difference. I’ll update you once the air drying sage is done.

Step 3
Place your dried sage in a bowl and

Crumble  the dried sage with your fingers.


Step 4
Press the crumbled sage through a strainer. This will get it fine and crumbly and remove any left over stems or sage leaves that didn’t crumble.



Step 5
Put the sage into a dry, sterilized jar. I ended up with 1 cup of rubbed sage.

This sage plant cost me $3 in the spring. I would say that it has already paid me back. Have you seen the price of sage lately?