How to press your own fresh vegetable oils
Here’s a highlight of a super cool gadget that I own and LOVE.
Earlier this morning as I was applying my home-pressed pumpkin seed facial oil (with Helichrysum, carrot seed, yarrow and blue chamomile essential oils… decadent!) I realized that you all probably don’t know about home oil presses.
This is something I posted on a while back on Uncle Dutch Farms, so I thought I’d make a quickie post here to tell you about it.
A couple years back, I got the Piteba oil expeller and I love that thing!
Most people consider vegetable oils to be healthy (amIrighthere?) but what most people don’t know is that most of the time, those oils have to be extracted using chemical solvents (canola! soybean!) and so there isn’t really anything “natural” about them.
And that doesn’t even touch the GMO issue (cough*soybean*cough).
My food philosophy is pretty much this – I realllly dislike eating anything that requires modern technology to become edible.
Home-pressed oils fit the bill. Fresh, delicious, healthy and very possible for you to even grow your own seeds/nuts and produce the oil directly from your own homegrown!
Soybean oil? Not so much. I don’t care how awesome your press is, you can not mechanically press soybean oil. Soybean oil is extracted using hexane, and then the remaining meal gets turned into animal feed and soy protein for human consumption. Yum? Not so much.
SO, moving along here… I ended up buying a Piteba to press my own oils and have really loved this thing.
My only pet peeve is that it’s kind of a pain to clean, so it’s not like a “I’m gonna go press an ounce of toasted sesame oil for dinner” kinda deal. But with a little planning ahead, it’s yielded some delicious, fresh and healthy oils for our table.
I’ve had luck pressing sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds. I’m also going to try coconut oil, although the pain that it is to remove the coconut meat from the shell is probably enough that I wouldn’t want to do it consistently.
You can also toast the seeds beforehand for extra flavor, though the shelf life is diminished.
This would also be awesome for anyone who takes flax seed oil for omega 3s – nice and fresh (not to mention cheap!).
So, if you’ve ever wanted to press your own veggie oils, you can read my full review with pictures here.
Also – for all you preppers out there, this would be a very good thing to have on hand. Also for anyone who is eating a plant-based diet who wants a good source of healthy oils.
Click here to read my review. (also includes photos of the pressing process)
P.S. if you decide you MUST HAVE one of these bad boys, I’d love it if you used the link in the review. It’s my affiliate link, so they will give me a lil sales commission which will go towards the “Camera-less in Blog-Land fund.”
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