How to Dry Chives (Plus Freezing for Long-Term Storage)

Harvest chives when the stems are tall and tender. Hold a small bunch in one hand and snip the stems with kitchen shears about an inch above the soil line - leave that inch of base in place and the clump pushes out fresh growth from the cut point. Most chive patches give you two or three harvests across a single summer if you cut a bit at a time rather than stripping the whole plant in one go.

Try to harvest before the plants put up their pink-purple flower heads. The flowers themselves are edible and pretty in a salad, but once the plant flowers it puts its energy into seed rather than leaf growth, and the stems start to taste tougher.

Morning is the best time to cut. Essential oils that give chives their oniony bite are most concentrated before the sun has had a chance to bake them off.

For more on preserving garden herbs, see our guides on drying sage, drying rosemary, drying basil, and drying lavender.

Bring the chives inside and give them a quick rinse in cool water to lift any garden dust, aphids, or grit. Run them through a salad spinner to flick off the surface water - twenty seconds in the spinner does the job without bruising the stems.

No spinner on hand? Pat the chives dry with a clean kitchen towel or layers of paper towel. The principle is the same: pull as much water off the stems as you can before they get chopped. Wet chives bruise more on the cutting board and the bruised pieces brown faster during drying.

Don't skip the wash if your chives came from a garden bed - even tidy-looking stems hide little flecks of dirt at the base where they grew.

Hold a small bunch of chives over a clean bowl and snip them into pieces about a quarter-inch long with kitchen shears. The shears cut cleanly without crushing the stems - if you press through with a dull knife you bruise the chives, and bruised pieces brown faster as they dry and don't freeze as nicely either.

A sharp chef's knife on a cutting board works too. Either way, work in small bundles so the pieces stay an even size. Uneven pieces dry at different rates and you end up with some crisp and some still soft in the same batch.

The whole kitchen will smell like onion by the time you finish a big bunch. That's normal and means the essential oils are still in the stems - exactly where you want them when the chives go into the jar.

Of the two methods, freezing keeps the chives tasting closest to fresh-from-the-garden. Spoon the cut chives into a clean dry mason jar, leaving about an inch of headspace at the top. Press the lid on tight and pop the jar straight into the freezer. No blanching, no flash-freeze tray - chives are hardy enough to freeze loose without clumping into a brick.

When winter comes, lift the jar out, scoop what you need with a spoon, and put it right back in the freezer. The chives don't get freezer-burned because the jar seals tight, and they spoon out as easily as the day you packed them.

A freezer bag works too - press as much air out as you can before you seal it. Glass jars stack better in a chest freezer; bags lie flatter in a drawer-style freezer. Both keep chives in good shape for at least a year.

The other option is passive air-drying, the way many gardeners learned from their grandmothers. Scatter the cut chives in a thin even layer on a sheet of parchment paper, a plate, or a cooling rack. A cooling rack is best because air gets at the chives from underneath as well as the top.

Don't pile them deep - a single thin layer is what you want. Too thick and the underneath pieces stay damp and can grow mold instead of drying.

Skip the tea towel. The chives stick to fabric and the towel holds them damp longer than they need to be. Parchment paper or a clean plate gives the chives a surface they release from easily.

Air-dried chives need two to four days at room temperature, depending on how humid your house is. In a dry house, two days is plenty; in a humid summer kitchen, give them four or five and stir them around once a day so the bottom layer gets airflow.

To test, pick up a piece and press it between your fingers. If it crunches and crumbles into bits, the batch is done. If it bends or feels soft, the chives need another day. Better to err on the side of more time - any piece that goes into the jar with moisture still in it can mold the whole batch.

Properly dried chives keep their vibrant green color, not brown. The color is the giveaway: bright green means good flavor; brown or grey means the chives sat damp too long and lost some of their oomph.

Funnel the dried chives into a clean dry mason jar and screw the lid on tight. A canning funnel makes this less messy if the chives are crumbly. If you've got bigger pieces in the batch, crumble them with your fingers as they go in - smaller flakes pack tighter into a small jar.

Write the date on the lid with a permanent marker. Six months from now you'll know exactly when this batch was made. A simple chalkboard sticker on the front works too if you want it to look pretty on a shelf.

Store the jar somewhere cool and dark - a pantry shelf or kitchen cabinet works well. Heat from the stove and direct sunlight fade the green color and dull the flavor over time. Properly dried and jarred, chives hold their flavor for at least a year. Frozen chives keep just as well, sealed tight in the freezer.