Learning this easy way to cure tobacco in the sun made my day.
Learn to grow your own tobacco in my simple booklet: amzn.to/2kR5tOg
Drying tobacco in the sun was something I always wanted to learn right from a tobacco farmer, rather than from second-hand sources online. Sun-curing tobacco is an old, traditional method of curing tobacco. Though I tried drying leaves in my car, they dried too fast and tasted harsh. What was I missing? Turns out I just needed to fly half-way around the world and meet a tobacco farmer to find out. With this tobacco curing method, you don't need a fire or a sweatbox or a tobacco barn. All you need is four days of sun and some ingenious drying mats. As I learned from the farmer, curing tobacco in the sun like this requires a few steps.
1. Harvest and shred your tobacco.
2. Spread it out about 1" thick on mats in full sun
3. Flip the tobacco twice per day
4. After four days, the tobacco is finished and can be brought indoors
The tobacco tastes sweet and good after this curing process. Looks like I'll need to cure tobacco this way in the future. Sun-drying tobacco is common in Turkey and Asia but is not as well-known in the US. When I was writing my booklet on how to grow tobacco, it was hard to get good info on sun-drying and my own experiments weren't great. I had much more luck hanging tobacco up to dry for months and months. Now I can cure tobacco fast - with solar power! A big thanks to this Indonesian farmer who taught me how to cure tobacco! I hope you find this video helpful - I certainly learned a lot while filming it.