Let's Make Comfrey Infused Oil | The Quick Method

Howdy friends and welcome back to the channel. I had a local customer who wanted me to make some comfrey oil for her and I'm going to take you along for the journey. So even though I don't make products to sell online anymore, one of my long-time customers was like could you please make some comfrey oil. Her and her family absolutely love it, they use it all the time and I was like I can totally do that for you. This used to be a that I would make and sell. It's a big truck coming by. So anyhow I thought I would take you along for the journey because I'm going to be using like a quicker method and this is also one of those infused oils that we can make in the fall especially if you've done what I've done with my comfrey. But first let's talk about why you care. One of comfrey's common names is knit bone and it's an amazing anti-inflammatory. It helps with sore muscles. It's a specific actually for broken bones, torn ligaments, pulled tendons and can help heal tissues very very quickly. And so while it's not always my go-to for just sore muscles it can absolutely be used for that and like I said a powerful anti-inflammatory. So when infused into oil it can be really good for people who have chronic aches and pains, who have any injuries, who are prone to injuries, all of these kinds of things. So I'm going to turn the camera around and show you my comfrey and talk to you a little bit about why I'm able to make this late September. Okay this is one of many comfrey plants that I have on the property. This one has been completely mowed down twice which is why I have so many leaves in such great shape that I'm able to make some comfrey oil this late in the season. Comfrey can get rather large and can get a little bit out of control and so we like I said we'll just like hack it right back. Friends it can handle it, trust me. Comfrey can go in pretty much any areas. It does seem to like full sun and well-draining soil but like I said we have some growing on the property that just naturalized in other areas in full shade and it's doing quite well. It's actually pretty hard to kill. This one I dug up. I actually wanted mugwort here and I thought I got the entire root structure. I actually gave chunks of the root to students and I was like here plant this on your property and clearly that didn't work. It just keeps coming back. So it's one of those plants that well like you can't kill it and you can have a later season harvest if you completely mow it back. Now yours might still look like this too which is really kind of cool. Another thing that I actually have videos on this so I'll make sure I link them but it's a really good plant to use for mulch and really good for making like your own compost tea and so that is something else you can consider like if you're a homesteader or a gardener and you want to have some natural fertilizer options. Comfrey's a great plant for that as well. It's really really high in minerals. I know some people take it internally and use it for like nourishing herbal infusions. I personally don't just because I'm a little nervous about some of the um the effect it has on the liver. Everybody to each their own you know you do you but again a lot of those minerals those compounds are going to infuse into this oil which is why it's good for sore muscles achy joints injuries all that kind of stuff. So what I'm going to do I'll try my best I'm on my own I'll see if I can set up the camera and show you but I'm basically just going to harvest a whole bunch of leaves. For me this is a couple of a like a two day process at least. So this is part one and then I'm going to show you the rest of the process afterwards. All right I just could not get my camera to cooperate um but here's a closer look at Comfrey. The leaves are actually quite fuzzy and so while this is also a very common plant and I've shared lots of information about doing poultices so let's say you've dislocated a joint or broken a bone after it's been set properly friends. Not to mention we're just having a um you know a long-term use of this topically in a poultice could cause some irritation. Let's see if I can get close and you can kind of see there look at those cool little hairs yeah super awesome but something else I want to show you and I hope I can get it on camera is just how juicy this plant is and there's a reason why that's important. So I'm going to get to harvesting and then I'm going to show you a really important step you have to do before you make your fresh Comfrey herbal infused oil. All right I've got all of my Comfrey harvested and I am in my garage. The reason I'm in here is because as I showed you before the Comfrey had a lot remember when I squished the stalk and all that moisture came out that's a really important thing to pay attention to because moisture plus herbs equals rancidity or a moldy end product. Fun fact until we my the outside of my house got sprayed directly by a skunk I used to think rancid Comfrey oil was the worst smell I'd ever smelled. Now it's the second worst smell I've ever smelled. But this is one of the only plants that I do this with I'm gonna let it wilt. So I'll turn the camera on and show you the setup. You just have to promise not to judge my garage because friends we all have a spot in our house right where we probably wouldn't take guests or turn a camera on in. Well I don't have a garage so all of our crap ends up out here. Any whozles. I'll show you the setup I've got. I'm gonna let this Comfrey wilt for the rest of the afternoon and wilt overnight. This is gonna help some of the moisture is going to evaporate from it. We actually do I turned it off for filming purposes but we also have a dehumidifier out here because the garage tends to flood and have issues with water. The dehumidifier has made a huge difference but that's going to help speed up that process as well. So now tomorrow morning when I make the herbal infused oil and show you what I'm doing from there on in I'm going to have a wilted product. It's not completely dried but some of the moisture will be gone. Now if you want to use dried use dried. Let's not create barriers to herbal medicine. One of the things that I'm really trying to help people with is all this self-sabotage and negative talk we have about I don't know enough I can't do this I don't have the right stuff blah blah blah. Buy dried Comfrey. If that's what you have access to use it. I prefer using fresh but there is a learning curve to using fresh herbs. Anyhow let's I'll show you the setup I've got. Okay so I have just like a laundry drying rack and I have my Comfrey leaves hanging out on here and like I said they're gonna stay out here for the rest of the afternoon and overnight and then tomorrow morning I'll turn the camera back on and show you the rest of the process on how to make a quick Comfrey infused oil. Okay so it's actually two days later I meant to film this yesterday and we just had a really busy homeschool day and if you're interested in homeschool stuff I actually just posted a video of our grade seven curriculum but as you can see well I don't know if you can but there's still quite a bit of moisture left in these leaves so one of the things I'm going to do can you zoom in okay is the stock of the plant is where moist most of the moisture is so I'm going to take a pair of scissors let's see let's clear out of the way here so you guys can see what I'm doing and I'm just going to cut along this and I'm going to discard it this extra step is going to help ensure that you're not going to have as much moisture when you're making your Comfrey infused oil so it is a little bit of a tedious step you can try ripping it might be a bit faster there's still a decent amount of moisture in these leaves because I do want to make a fresh infused oil ideally so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get to work and I'm going to start cutting out this part and this is I'm just going to compost and get rid of and I'm going to use the outside leaf part and I'll show you what I'll do next after I get all that work done. Okay so I have all of my Comfrey de-spined the next step is I'm going to chop my herbs with my mezzaluna if you don't have one of these you totally need one I have a link below to one that is very similar to mine I've had a couple people ask me why I don't link mine because I bought it at a little kitchen store in downtown Markham, Markham village I think like 18 years ago and so if I had to buy another one this is the one that I would buy so that's the link below. Now I'm going to be making a fairly large quantity of this I'm going to be making a liter which I think is a quart size jar for my American friends this is going to make a lot of oil but remember I am selling some of this so I want you to think about how much you and your family would go through and then the goal is that once you roughly chop your Comfrey that you're going to loosely fill your jar so I'm going to get to chopping like I said all the spines are out and I'm just going to start see this is why you want the mezzaluna friends because it makes really short work of chopping herbs this is great for culinary herbs as well yesterday for dinner I was able to chop up thyme, oregano, marjoram, rosemary all fresh from the garden and it's so fast. Now you're going to hear multiple opinions about whether you should chop your herbs or not and I want you to know that that's exactly what they are opinions you do what feels good to you. I chop herbs because it increases the surface area in which my oil which is the medium that's going to do the extracting that's going to pull the medicine from the plant it's going to come in contact to more surface area because I've chopped it so that's why I chop my plants some people say it's disrespectful to the plants other people say that it's not necessary like I said do what feels good and do what feels right to you don't let that be a barrier. So I've got about half of mine chopped already once I'm done and I have my jar filled I'll show you the next step of the process I am going to be using what I call my quick herbal infused oil method. I do have a video on that which I'll link below but I'll show it to you in this video as well. So I'm going to be using apricot kernel oil today I like using apricot kernel oil because it absorbs fairly quickly in the skin because this I know this is going to be used as an infused oil by my customer meaning she's not going to be making a salve with it and she's probably going to be putting it over fairly large surface areas her and her family. I want this to absorb a little bit faster if you use something like almond oil or coconut or not almond sorry olive oil or coconut oil they're a bit heavier and greasier they tend to take a little longer to penetrate into the skin the aforementioned almond oil is also a really nice choice. I say work with what's accessible to you work with what you can find apricot kernel oil does tend to be fairly shelf stable as well and it doesn't really have a scent so it's not going to like impart its own scent into the product that you're making. From what I understand this is the oil of choice for massage therapists so you can experiment with whatever you want like if tallow I don't know work with what work with what you have so what I'm going to do now this part's really easy I'm just going to pour the oil over the herbs. Now when we're working with fresh herbs and oils we always have to be worried about water content in our herbal infused oil so one of the ways that I'm going to mitigate some of the effects of this was by wilting our plants which I talked to you about earlier. Another way is using a little bit of heat not high heat warmth and so what that does as the oil warms some of the water content is going to evaporate off actually a lot of it and this method has been really successful for me it also helps it's got the added bonus of speeding up your infusion time so because I don't want my customer to wait too long and I'm worried because comfrey is a really watery plant I'm going to be using my instant pot so I'm going to wander on over there and show you how to do this it's really really simple like I said I have a video on this already but once you watch this you'll have the method down pat. All right I'm over here by my instant pot you can use a slow cooker to do this but please make sure that your slow cooker has a warm function you do not want the water in here to get too hot that's really really important because what we're trying to do here is avoid any bacteria growth right warming it so the water evaporates off but also trying to avoid rancidity and when you heat up oils at temperatures that are too high it's just going to go rancid you're going to have to dump the whole thing out so while in our brains we're like oh hotter means faster don't do it friends trust me so you want a warm function for this so what I've done is I've got some water inside the instant pot do you mind giving them showing them and I've got some dishcloths in here now the dishcloths are just so that way when I place my jar in and I actually want a bit more water in here yeah the dishcloths kind of help to nestle the jar so it won't fall over it's going to take a bit of tinkering with I might add one or two more cloths I would like the water ideally to come up to about here and like I said I'm going to have it on warm and I'm going to keep it like this probably all day all through the night and then tomorrow morning I'll come back to you we'll show you the color difference and we'll strain out our oil and I'll show you what I do after that super quick side note that I forgot to mention you do want to keep the lid off now if you're worried about anything flying in there you can loosely place a paper towel wrap it with an elastic put a cloth over top something that's not going to prevent the water from evaporating out right so if we put our lid on and we warm our oil then any water that's going to evaporate out from our infused oil won't be able to get out so I usually just leave it open like this I've never had anything fall in there but that's a key point to remember and I'll see you tomorrow okay so it's been about 24 hours my oil has been sitting in my instant pot for that long on warm you can already see the color difference so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to strain it I just use a fine mesh strainer a large one and a large measuring cup so I'm going to pour and you can already look at the color difference of that oil so you can tell even after 24 hours it has infused beautifully there we go now if I were using dried herbs I would actually want to try to squeeze as much oil out as possible one of the drawbacks of using dried herbs is because they're dry they're going to suck up all that oil very very quickly especially if you use something like lavender it's kind of like a sponge and it's going to suck all that up so you're going to want to find a way use cheesecloth a potato ricer whatever you have to try to get as much of that oil out as possible but because these were wilted still fresh herbs I don't want to squeeze out any of the oil from these because if there's any moisture left in the plant I'm going to be squeezing that out as well so instead what I'm going to do is leave it for a minute or two just as it drips and once that's done I'll show you how I bottle it up and we'll talk a little bit about the possibility of adding essential oils okay so I've done the main straining of the oil and if you remember what color the apricot kernel oil was before and you look at it now you can definitely see that the chemical constituents from the comfrey have infused into this oil that's why I love leaving it for 24 hours because it definitely makes a stronger oil let's talk a little bit about packaging I like using these amber glass bottles the ones that I have are the ones here if you can zoom in they're the ones for essential oils so what I usually tell my customers to do is to pop this part off when they get home because it's really hard for like an infused oil to drip through that but what I like is that they don't leak and they're fairly inexpensive I also prefer darker glass because it's less likely to oxidize giving your product a longer shelf life which is important I also want to talk a little bit about essential oils that is completely up to you whether you decide you'd like to add some so for the purposes of what I'm making my comfrey infused oil does have a few essential oils I don't like going above a one percent dilution so for a bottle like this I'm probably using a total of 15 drops total of three essential oils so I'm using black spruce I'm using pine and I'm using ginger and I'm pretty meticulous about the way that I do this and so I'm counting out individual drops I know I've got like one two oh about six drops of pine that I need to add to that and I only do a very small amount of ginger I like the ginger because it's warming and it helps the oil to penetrate tissues and when you have things like muscle pain two three four and five that's it that's it so I put my essential oils in first the next step that I like to do is I like to pour into a measuring cup that's a little bit easier for me to work with and I do a second straining with a really super fine mesh strainer so that way if there's any bits of herb material that's in there especially if you use dried herbs you're going to want to do this step because there's often like they tend to be a bit gustier so it's easier for me to pour into those bottles from this than it is from this so I'm just going to do a second straining look at that color oh it's so magical and that's about enough for me for this it's not going to fill all my bottles but again I tend to be messy and I'm just erring on the side of caution just a second straining I don't have anywhere to put that there we go paper towel and from here you can choose to use a little funnel personally I've always just poured it this way and I'm just really super careful and you're going to fill your bottle so your last but very important step is make sure you label your bottle so you know what's in it we always forget this step life gets busy then you know what happens friends you open up your cupboard you got about five different bottles full of things and you don't know what they are so make sure you take the time to label this if you added essential oils make sure you include those as well especially if you want to gift it to anyone that way you know people are curious they want to know what's in there I also suggest putting the date so that way you know how old your oil is I like to use them up within a year so that gives you an idea of how much you want to produce for yourself but yeah slap a label on it and you're done so thank you so much for joining me and making some comfrey infused oil if you follow this video's instructions and you made some oil I want to hear about it drop it in the comments below if you've got questions concerns or anything you want to pick my brain about you know what to do put your comments below and until next time this is Corrine from Spirea Herbs wishing you health and wellness.