Last month, I harvested my orange turmeric from the backyard my wife was going to make some Turmeric starch but with the health issue, she had to postponed this until yesterday. In order to help with the process I recently bought a dehydrator to shorten the drying process.
First my wife, Minh-Sa, spent many hours peeling the orange Turmeric rhizomes, it's not an easy task so she selected only the largest ones and the smaller ones were left for me to make regular Turmeric powder.
After peeling, she used a NutriBullet to blend the rhizomes with water until it creates a smooth paste, sifted the solids out and squeezed the juice out through a clothe and repeat the whole process several times to extract as much starch as possible.
The juice squeezed out from the paste also contains Turmeric oil that floats on top. The juice is kept in the fridge for three days until the starch settles to the bottom and this is when she will pour out the liquid and will have to dry the starch that remains at the bottom.
Meanwhile, I started to boil some water and drop my small rhizomes in to clean off the skin. I kept the boil for three minutes and then put the rhizomes into cold water and gave them a slight rub and started slicing them to about 3-5 mm thick.
The slices are then laid on the dehydrator racks. Notice that I didn't peel those rhizomes as they are edible and it's less effort to leave them as is.
After about 10 hours at 65 C, the slices are dry and could cracked broken with my fingers.
I used the NutriBullet blender/grinder to powder them, I then used a sifter to retain the fine powder while the larger pieces went back for another grinding session until everything is just fine powder.
The left over pulp from my wife's Turmeric starch making process was dried in the oven at about 70 C overnight. We didn't use the dehydrator because not only it was already used for my Turmeric slices but because the pulp was from blending the turmeric, as it dries out it will also get powdery and the fan of the dehydrator would create a real mess.
We also ground the Turmeric pulp and sifted it several times and the result is much more pleasing to the eye because my wife has peeled the rhizomes before blending them, the Turmeric powder from peeled rhizomes has a much more vibrant orange/yellow color. Because our blender has a plastic container, we didn't want to scratch it and risk to also get plastic particles into our powder, my wife decided to pre-grind the pulp with a mortar and pestle before using the NutriBullet. Our son, Thien-San offered to help his mum:
In the photo below, you can see on the left the Turmeric powder I made from unpeeled rhizomes while the one on the right is from my wife's peeled ones.
The unpeeled Turmeric powder had a stronger scent than the peeled one but I think this is mainly due to the fact that my wife has extracted the starch and oil from it. Despite that, both powders were smelling way much better than the Turmeric powder we bought from the shop and the bonus is we do know exactly what is in our powder!
The powder is then stored in Mason jars with a tea bag filled with raw rice grains to absorb any moisture.
I'm looking forward to our next curry 😌
Previously on my blog:
- ULOG 163 - Small Steem Telly Updates
- Engagement contest: Winner of the 15 SmartVote Shares
- ULOG 161 - Slowing down on Steem and spend more time with the family
- ULOG 159 - Various updates in my life
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