I thought some of you cooks would want to experiment with distilling your own food essential oils and hydrosols.
While looking at a reference today on facebook for distilling your own essential oil, an elaborate set up for making the distilling unit reminded me of a teapot distiller shown in Jean Gordon's wonderful "The Art of Cooking with Roses" circa 1960. Which led me to doing a bit of research on 'simple' distilling units and I wound up on a distilling site with what has to be the easiest way to distill small amounts at a time. A stove pot Italian Expresso Maker!
Ignore the picture and read down about a page to where "Jack writes" starts
http://homedistiller.org/flavor/oils
If you distill, for instance, rose petals - you wind up with pure rose essential oil floating on the top of the resulting liquid. The liquid would be a hydrosol, containing some of the scent and properties of the rose - think rose water.
Here is what the expresso maker looks like in case you have not seen one.
Just a reminder on "food essential oils" -- never use directly, always use in a carrier oil or in cooking added to liquids.
Might be fun if any experiment and post results.
Use a NEW pot for EO production otherwise everything will smell and taste like coffee! :-)
Replies
So cool catherine! Thanks for this!
You are welcome, Karis - I can't believe how simple that will be - I need to get one and try my lavender out in it :-)