Cooking with Chef Jo: Make Your Own Flavored Extracts

 

Now that the holidays are over, I imagine your flavored extracts are running a rad bit low. I know they are in my cabinets.

Now if you have a problem with alcohol like I do, then you are pretty much out of luck buying grocery store flavorings. Unless you go to the natural food stores and buy their high dollars, alcohol-free kind. Y'all know that's not me on my budget. Right now, I've got a small ton of peelings from the oranges, grapefruits, tangerines/ Mandarins, lemons, and limes I peeled to can my citrus salad and individual fruits I canned a few weeks ago. I really don't have room in my freezers to keep them. Yes, I used about half of the zest in my canning process,  I use about 1/4 of the leftovers to dehydrated some zest for stores.  But, there's still about a 1/4 left that I really do not have a use for.

I set about researching. I typed in alcohol-free extracts into my search engine and voila! One of the first choices was thespruceeats.com that gave the steeping liquid as 3:1 vegetable glycerin to water. My husband got a buzzer from Staples once. It says, "That was easy!" I don't know why I've kept it all these years, but it sits on my desk. I hit it. For good measure I read the whole blog post. It takes four cups og material (whatever extract you're making). This was no problem. I had almost 8 cups of zest that I'd left on long, thick strips in freezer bags in my household (above the refrigerator freezer) All the stuffed, individual qt sized bags were compressed and put into gal bags to keep them together. I bought a gallon of non-GMO, 100% vegetable glycerin off Amazon and a case of Amber glass, 4 oz bottles and caps  from U-Line (I've had an acct with them for decades). For less than $50, I was all set up to be my own extract making demon. I already had some empty, clean 1/2 gallon mason jars handy to start the process with. For good measure, I'd sterilize these. Now, I'll I had to do is wait on Amazon delivery for the glycerin in a couple of days to get started.

A few days later. I turned my kitchen into a chemistry lab. I sterilized my jars in a 250℉ oven for 20 minutes and turned them over onto a clean dish towel. Measuring cups too. I poured 9 cups of glycerin into each jar with 3 cups of water. I placed the zest strips of lemons, oranges, grapefruits. limes, and tangerines//mandarins into there respective jars. Shook them up, labeled them, and set them up in the cupboard. I'd visit them for the next six months every other day to shake up their world. Then, I'll strain the liquid, and decant them into more usable 4 oz bottles. I can foresee  taking a year to go through this much flavorings pf deviousness at my fingertips. I mean really the store bought bottles are 2 ozs at most.

Vision of vanilla, almond, walnut, and cherry extracts dance through my brain with all the yummy recipe possibilities for pennies on the dollar prices. Oh yeah! Good flavors are abound with ao many flavor retracts to experiment with.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Chef Jo