Homemade EXTRACTS, SPICE BLENDS, HERBAL INFUSIONS + More! Saving Money in the Kitchen!

Hey friend, welcome back to Steven Sparrow Homestead. My name is Kelsey if this is your first time here. Today we are working on some DIY projects that I've been meaning to get to for quite a long while, but I finally have the time. So these are things that I need to get ready for future projects. These are some ingredients needed for things like salves and soap making, so we're doing some herbal oil infusions today. We're also going to be making a few different types of extracts. I just ran out of a few spice blends today, so I figured I'll throw that in here as well. So we've got spice blends and tis the season for elderberry syrup, so I have that on the agenda as well. The last thing we might end up doing today if the rain lets up is heading outside and foraging some rose hips. If there are any rose hips, I'm not totally sure. I have quite a few rose bushes and I purposely did not deadhead them in hopes that they would form rose hips. So if the rain lets up, we'll go outside and we'll check. Those are really high in vitamin c, super tasty, you can use them in a whole bunch of different ways. So I'm going to pop them in the freeze dryer for future projects if I can find any. So with that I'm going to grab an apron and we're going to get started. Our first item is going to be some extracts today. We're going to do vanilla, of course, you can't not have vanilla extract. I'm also going to do some mint extract. This is mountain mint from my garden. I freeze dried this. You could use spearmint, peppermint, whatever type of mint you have. I had some chocolate mint. I was really hopeful I would harvest enough to make an extract, but it did not work out that way. It had a really poor year, so hopefully next year I'll have some chocolate mint to make an extract with. I thought that would be yummy. We're also going to do some cinnamon sticks. I just have some generic cinnamon sticks here for a cinnamon extract. For the alcohol, I have a variety here. I have some vodka, some bourbon, and some spiced rum. I kind of went midline with the alcohol purchases. I didn't want to purchase the cheapest and have the flavor end up tasting cheap, but I also didn't want to spend an arm and a leg, so we just went midline with the alcohol. Now, of course, you can use these in baking. I also thought they'd be good in tea to flavor hot chocolate over the cold months. If you do drink alcohol, you could use them in cocktail mixes. The first step here is gathering our vanilla beans, and we're going to score them down at the center, not necessarily slicing all the way through. We just want to expose all of the yummy goodness inside, all of that flavor. I purchased my vanilla beans off of Amazon. That's where I found them cheapest. I do know they have some wholesale type groups on Facebook. I don't use Facebook very often, so Amazon was just the easiest for me, the most accessible, and the most affordable. I believe that grade B is what you are after, although you use what you can find. The ones I have here are either Tahitian or Madagascar grade B. Some people take their vanilla making very, very seriously. I'm not one of those people. I want it to taste good, but I'm not after perfection here. Regardless of your ingredients used or your methods, you're still going to get a really good product, and you're still going to save some money in the long run. I've scored my beans. I've also cut them in half to make sure that they fit in the jar. Per quart jar, I put in 20 vanilla beans, and I just poured my alcohol on top. That one there was just an 80 proof vodka, so 40% alcohol. It's my understanding that the higher proof, the better. For my smaller pine jars here, I just did half the amount of vanilla beans, so 10 per jar, sliced in half again. The rule of thumb here is per cup of alcohol, you want to use five vanilla beans. For my second jar, I decided to use some spiced rum. This can give it a smoother, sweeter, and richer flavor compared to a vodka, which is a bit more neutral, being more of a pure vanilla flavor. Then for my third jar, I'm using a Kentucky bourbon. The bourbon is usually just more of a complex flavor. It's going to give you a deeper flavor. I thought they'd all be fun to have in the pantry for various uses, depending on what I am baking. We're adding in our beans, filling with alcohol to the top, and I am going to put some lids on these. These will sit, for my preference, four months. There's a lot of debate on how long you need to let these sit for. I think that if it still smells overly alcoholy and smells like a cocktail, then you should let it go a bit longer. I have found four months seems to do the trick. Some people are super serious about it and won't touch it for six months to a year. You do what you want. It's your kitchen. I know some people will only let it go two months. For me, four months is preferred. I am just labeling what each one is, writing the date. I'm going to stick them in the back of my pantry in a dark place. I will shake them whenever I think about it or see them, and they'll be ready to use in four months. A bit of a cost comparison for you. Two ounces of vanilla at the store is $7. There's 32 ounces in a quart, so that would be $112 at the store. It cost me $30 to make that 32 ounces at home. The organic grade B Madagascar beans are $14.99, and so was the liter of vodka. Like I said, we're also going to do some mint extract. This is mint from my garden. You can use any mint that you can find. You could purchase some dried mint. This is freeze-dried mint, so I am packing this really well into the jar, firmly to about half full. And for the cinnamon sticks, I had seven on hand. I wanted to use eight, so seven went into the jar. For this, I am using the vodka for both extracts. And again, I am just going to fill these all the way to the top. You do want to make sure that all of your contents, whether they are an herb, a spice, or the vanilla beans, you want them completely covered by the alcohol. Otherwise, you may experience some molding. Like the vanilla beans, these will sit in my pantry for about four months until I go and use them in things like baked goods and drinks. We're going to move on to making some herbal oil infusions. These infusions will pull all of the good stuff out of whatever we are infusing the oil with. I am choosing some yarrow, lavender, some chamomile, and some calendula today. You can do this with a ton of different herbs and flowers. I will be using these infusions in things like soaps and salves, balms, ointments, lotions, chapstick, maybe some face cream. You name it, we'll be doing it later on this year. You can get really precise with measurements here. I'm not too specific about it. I usually go by filling my jar half full with whatever I'd like to infuse the oil with. So right here, I have some freeze-dried calendula. I am packing it down pretty tightly, and then we are going to fill this jar to the top with our oil of choice. Now, I have chosen all of these herbs today off of my own research, but please do your own. Calendula is anti-inflammatory. It's antimicrobial. It promotes cell growth and repair. It's great for healing up burns, bruises, and scrapes, and it's high in antioxidants. The oil I have chosen for this specific blend is jojoba oil. This is much lighter. It won't clog your pores, so it's great for topical use on your skin. I also am going to do another batch with olive oil later on for things like soap making. The olive oil is a bit more affordable than the jojoba oil. So like I said, I'm just filling these to the top with the oil, and I am going to place a lid on here, and this will go over to the windowsill where it will sit and infuse for four weeks. Now, the next two herbs that I'm going to be infusing are lavender and chamomile, probably somewhat familiar to you. They're both very soothing and relaxing. Lavender is great for reducing anxiety and stress. It may help improve your sleep. It is anti-inflammatory and can be really great for soothing skin irritation, as will chamomile. The chamomile is also really high in antioxidants. It can help decrease feelings of stress and tension. It is great for digestion, and it is also anti-inflammatory. For these two, I am choosing to use the jojoba oil again. I plan on using these for things on the skin, so no olive oil here for these either. I know some other popular oils of choice might be grapeseed oil, as well as almond oil. Those are two that I have not used personally. These next two infusions are going to be some more calendula, as well as some yarrow. These two, I am going to be infusing with olive oil. I plan to use these in soap making, and a lot of the soap making recipes, it calls for olive oil. Some fun facts about yarrow. I am using both the flower and the leaves here. Yarrow is known as the first aid plant. It is antiseptic and antimicrobial. It can also be used as a digestive bitter, and it's a diaphoretic, or a sweat-inducing agent, which can help break a high fever. Same thing here. I am filling the jars half full with the herbs, and filling to the top with olive oil. I had some jojoba oil left over, so I decided to do one last infusion. I have a whole bunch of rose petals from my garden that have been freeze-dried, and roses are great for the skin. They're astringent, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, so I'm going to probably be using these in a face cream later on. Again, this is just a one-to-two ratio. One part herbs to two parts oil, and I did want to mention all of these items, all of these herbs and oils, are all organic. They haven't been sprayed with any chemicals, pesticides, yucky stuff. We don't want to use those things on our skin or in our products, so if you're going to make any of these things, do your best to source organic. Now, these are just going to sit on the windowsill for about four weeks to infuse. There's a few different methods you can do. I know there's a double boiler method. I've always chosen to do it this way. It works out just great, pretty hands-off, and easy. So in four weeks, we'll come back and we'll work on some other projects. We are going to make two spice blends. Ones that are pretty popular this time of year, we're going to make a pumpkin pie spice as well as a chai spice. They're super expensive in the store, and it's much cheaper if you make them on your own. You can make them in bulk, super easy. So all we need for the chai spice is four teaspoons of ground cinnamon, two teaspoons of ground ginger, one teaspoon of ground cardamom, a half teaspoon of grated nutmeg, a half teaspoon of allspice, a half teaspoon of ground cloves, and one eighth teaspoon of ground black pepper. Now, I'm going to make a double batch of the chai spice right away. You could make a triple or quadruple batch, however much you think you would actually use. My kids actually love chai spice. I use it in baked goods. You can use it. I just actually made a chai spiced icing for my daughter's sixth birthday. My kids love chai spiced warm milk in the morning. I just throw a little tiny splash of maple syrup just to sweeten it up a little bit. They love that. They think it's super yummy. And then for the pumpkin pie spice, we're going to need three tablespoons of cinnamon, two teaspoons of ground ginger, two teaspoons of nutmeg, one and a half teaspoons allspice, and one and a half teaspoons of cloves. I'm just going to be using some little jelly jars here to store these mixes in. Okay, let's make some elderberry syrup. We're going to start off with six cups of filtered water. To this, we're going to add one cup of dried organic elderberries. I'm going to add in a half tablespoon of ground ginger and two cinnamon sticks. If you don't have the cinnamon sticks, you could just add in a tablespoon of cinnamon. This is something that we all take here in our house about every other day during the cooler months when germs are on the rise, just to help strengthen our immune systems and fight off anything that we may come into contact with. This is going to be brought up to a boil and then we're going to keep this covered and allow it to simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes. And while we wait for that 30 minutes, we're going to head outside to see if we can find any rose hips that are ready. The rose in question today is the generous gardener from David Austin. I thought I saw a few hips ready for picking here the other day. This specific rose produces very large rose hips. Here's one for you to see in case you don't know what they look like. Depending on the rose, they come in different shades of orange, pink, and red. Now I found a whole bunch along the roadside behind our house from some multiflora wild roses and those hips are very small and come in clusters of red. They can be used in different things. Like I said, they're a really great source of vitamin C. You can use them in tea, but I know people also use them to make jelly. The bigger hips are better for that because they have a bit more pulp to them, a bit more substance. Those multiflora roses or if you just have some smaller rose hips, they just don't have a whole lot there and are just better for used in things like tea. Not too many were ready today, but I'll take what I can get. There's still a whole bunch left on the plant that will continue to ripen and get ready for harvest. Up front at my crown princess margarita rose, she's still blooming. I can't believe I still have so many rose blooms this far into October, but she's producing some hips as well and so is my proven winner's rose at last. Up front, still producing buds and there's a whole bunch of rose hips on there as well. Back inside, our elderberry syrup is done. So I've turned off the heat. I'm going to allow it to cool before I go ahead and strain it. And then I'll just put it into a mason jar. It cooks down to about four cups, a little under that. So it's perfect for a quart jar mason jar. And then whatever space is left, I add in some raw honey just to sweeten it up a bit. And you want to make sure you're not adding in that honey until it has cooled down. Otherwise you're going to ruin all of those good qualities of the raw honey with that heat. Now I will keep this in my fridge for about six weeks. Like I said, we'd take it about every other day. As always, I have all of the recipes and sources for things down in the description. I'll also include some dosage on these, but please like I said before, do your own research. I'm not a medical professional. I'm just sharing what I like to do for my own family. All right friends, here is everything we made today. All of our lovely concoctions. Don't they look beautiful? If you have any questions, please feel free to leave all of them down in the comments. I'll be happy to help you out. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button because in the coming weeks we'll be using a lot of these things up in future projects. I've got lots of fun DIY things coming as well as ways to save money in the kitchen and around the home. Some fun DIY hacks will be coming soon. Thank you all so much for joining me. I appreciate you all more than you know. Have a blessed day and I will see you next time. Take care.