For those of you who are not familiar with the name Palm Oil, it is a vegetable oil. It’s actually extracted from the palm fruit. It has lots of uses and it’s getting more famous every single day. Because of this oil, a lot of deforestation happens (which is very bad). If you want to know what to do, keep reading – I’ll teach you how to make palm oil at home!
Palm oil can be used in numerous applications, including food and cosmetics. However, some people are against using palm oil in the food industry because of its negative impact on the environment.
Palm oil is actually a vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of various species of palm trees. It’s frequently utilized in tropical countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, but it can also be found in other parts of the world. You may have already tasted palm oil, because it’s used as an ingredient in numerous products we use every day. This oil has been associated with many different medicinal benefits and is oftentimes used to cure ailments.
Table of Contents
Collection of palm fruits
Palm fruits grow in bunches. A single bunch of palm fruits weighs from 20 to 40 kilograms and contain hundreds of individual fruits.
Once you’ve found a bunch of palm fruits, carefully cut it down with a knife or machete. Try not to damage any of the individual fruits as they can be used to produce palm oil.
If you plan on processing the palm fruit into oil, you should begin by drying them as soon as possible. Once collected, place the fruit in an area with plenty of sunlight and allow them to dry.
Once dried, the fruit will take on a yellowish color and will emit an almost fermented odor. This is normal and means that your fruit is ready for processing into palm oil. If your fruit still has a greenish tint or doesn’t give off a fermented odor when pressed, it may still be too wet for use in oil production.
Cleaning of palm fruit
palm oil production can be achieved by starting from the small scale palm oil processing mill. The main aim of this project is to process palm fruit into crude palm oil, and then refine it into vegetable cooking oil. To set up a successful palm oil mill, the following steps are required:
Cleaning of Palm Fruit
Cleaning is important in the entire palm oil production processes. It is important to remove impurities and foreign materials that may harm the quality of final product. There are various methods for cleaning palm fruits but the most effective method is to use vibrating screens. This will reduce the amount of foreign material on the palm fruits which can cause problems later in the extraction process.
Boiling of palm fruits
Palm oil is widely used in the food industry because it has a high melting point and is stable at room temperature. However, this oil contains saturated fats, which are not healthy.
Processing of Palm Oil
Before palm oil is obtained from the palm fruit, it must go through a series of processing stages to ensure that the final product is free of impurities. Some of these stages include:
Boiling of palm fruits
This involves heating or boiling palm fruits in water until they are soft enough for crushing. This process uses steam to release the fatty acids from oil bearing cells of the fruit. The crushed nuts are then placed in water so as to separate the liquid from solid content by allowing the solid particles to sink to the bottom.
Put in a container after boiling
1. Break the palm fruits and get the palm fruit bunches.
2. Boil the palm fruits for about 2 hours.
3. Crush the boiled palm fruits with a wooden pestle and mortar to get a paste of the palm fruits.
4. Pour water into the paste, little by little, and mix very well after each addition of water. The fiber from the palm fruits will float on top of the water leaving the oil at the bottom of your bowl or cup.
5. Allow to settle for a day or two and you will see that what floated is actually fiber while what settled at the bottom is your pure oil derived from boiling palm fruit.
6. Use an oil filter to sieve out dirt from your oil if you so wish.
7. Voila! You have yourself some pure, unadulterated oil from palm fruit, ready to use in all sorts of ways!
Pressing the boiled fruits
The main ingredients in the production of palm oil is the fruit of palm trees. The fruits are harvested from the palm trees and boiled. After boiling, the fruits are pressed to extract the oil from them. The extracted oil is then filtered, processed and packaged.
After processing and packaging, the products are labeled and sold for commercial purposes. Palm oil has a wide range of usage and it is used for cooking food and deep frying foods like plantain, yam and other root crops.
You can make palm oil at home by manually pressing the boiled fruits to extract the oil from it. This is a simple process that can be done at home with little equipment needed.
Pressing the boiled fruits:
The boiled fruits should be placed on a clean surface or table where you would easily press it to extract the oil from it.
Place one half of the boiled fruit on a clean surface or table and start pressing it with your hands or any other pressing machine that can be used to press out liquid from anything you’re pressing.
The oil you will get from boiling of the pressed fruits
You may find palm oil a bit expensive in your local market. But I will show you how to make palm oil at home so you can produce palm oil on your own.
The process of making palm oil is very easy and straight forward. You don’t need to use any special equipment or process for palm oil extraction. The following are the simple steps to make palm oil from fresh palm fruit bunch:
- Get fresh fruits from tree.
- Sort the fruits and remove bad ones.
- Boiled the fresh fruits for about 3 hours or until the fruits is soft enough for pressing.
- After boiling, press the boiled fruits and take out the oil from it.
- The oil you will get from boiling of the pressed fruits.
Making edible oil at home is fun and easy, and it’s a great way to save money! Making small-batch palm oil at home is relatively straightforward. It should be hard to go wrong, as long as you have some moderate cooking skills.