Herbal Oils and Extracts

This category contains concentrated plant extracts of well-known kitchen herbs and plants. Here you'll find cacao, nettle, ginger, green tea and turmeric, each offered as an activated extract. So this is not loose dried tea or ground spice, but plant material reduced to a much smaller volume. Each label states which plant it concerns, which plant part is processed and which batch number belongs to the contents.

Extract versus the whole herb

With a whole herb you buy the dried plant part itself, including fibres, starch and cell walls. With an extract that plant part is first broken up and then brought into contact with a solvent, usually water or alcohol. The soluble components pass into that liquid. The plant residue is then filtered off and the solvent evaporated. What remains is a thickened mass that is dried into a powder. The term activated refers to a processing step with heat carried out before or during this process.

An extraction ratio like 10:1 means ten kilos of dried starting material were used for one kilo of end product. That ratio says something about the degree of concentration, but not automatically about a fixed content of a particular substance. Harvest, origin and method also determine what ends up in the batch. That's why the analysis of a batch often also states the measured content of a characteristic plant substance.

The plants in this category

• Turmeric is the rhizome of Curcuma longa, a plant from the ginger family. The orange-yellow colour comes from curcuminoids.
• Ginger is the rhizome of Zingiber officinale, from the same plant family. The sharp taste belongs to gingerols.
• Nettle is Urtica dioica. The species name dioica means dioecious, because male and female flowers are on separate plants. The leaf is processed.
• Green tea comes from the leaf of Camellia sinensis. After picking, the leaf is briefly heated so it doesn't oxidise as with black tea.
• Cacao comes from the seeds inside the fruit of Theobroma cacao. Those seeds are fermented and dried before being processed further.

Packaging and storage

The extracts are filled by weight into a resealable packaging. Store them dry, dark and at room temperature, with the seal well closed. Powders from plant material attract moisture and can therefore clump. Colour and smell differences between two batches are normal with natural raw materials.

A laboratory analysis is available for every batch. There is a batch number on the packaging. Give us that number and we'll send the corresponding report.