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PD: Herbal oils 1.

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A few different herbal oils.

These days I make my herbal oils (to be made into herbal salves) in two ways:

1) if I'm short on time, I do the waterbath, as outlined in earlier blogposts.
2) if it's a two-day thingie, and there's a reliable oven (as in, the temperature will stay at 50C when you set it to 50C), I put the oil'n'herbs in there overnight.

Here then are the herbal oil recipes of the first two days of recent product development:

A) Calendula oil
1 l cold-pressed organic safflower oil
50 g dried calendula petals
Let sit on a waterbath for 1.5 hours, let cool, strain by wringing oil'n'herb through cheesecloth. We got 9 dl calendula oil.

B) Calendula oil
1 l cold-pressed organic safflower oil
50 g dried calendula petals
Let sit in the oven on 50C overnight.
This was a normal household oven, and they tend to be unreliable on the very low temperatures. That 50C setting turned out to actually be 94C.
As we also had a vinegar in there - which boiled over, leaving a burnt sticky mess on the oven floor - the calendula oil smelled burnt. It was a much deeper yellow than the waterbath oil, but because it had been so hot for so long it'll likely to turn rancid much faster.
Check your oven settings with a thermometer before sacrificing your herbal oil to it ...

C) Spruce shoot oil
8 dl cold-pressed organic sesame oil
400 g frozen fresh spruce shoots
Let sit in the oven on 50C overnight. That's the same oven as above calendula salve, with the same burnt vinegar, so this oil smelled very strongly of burnt whatnot. We ended up discarding it.

D) Peppermint oil
50 g dried peppermint leaf
6 dl cold-pressed organic rapeseed oil
Let sit on a waterbath for 2 hours, strain. This gave 5 dl infused peppermint oil. (And that's not the same as an extremely expensive essential oil!)

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Related entries: PD: Herbal oils 2 - PD: Herbal salves 1 - PD: Herbal salves 2 - Herbs in salves - Cat: Salves