STEVIA REBAUDIANA

Stevia is a wonderful zero-calorie natural herb that you can use to replace your refined sugars or artificial sweeteners. The herb contains no sugar, and thus has none of the associated ill-effects of sugar on the body. In fact, oral bacteria don’t feed on stevia so it doesn’t contribute to cavities.

Since the stevia is also said to have no carbohydrates, no glycemic index and no effect on insulin levels, its popularity has been growing. But it gets my goat that supermarkets often carry the white processed variants I’d rather stay away from. The good news is, if you really want to go all-natural, you can make your own extract at home using your choice of pure warm water. Here’s how:

You’ll need:

Fresh organically-grown stevia leaves

Pure water
A flat screen or net
A coffee filter or cheesecloth
A covered glass container

Harvest. Stevia is best harvested early in the morning when it is cool and the plant’s essential oils are at their peak. Harvesting during the coolest part of the day will intensify stevia’s sweetness. Don’t break off branches willy-nilly, make sure you use sharp pruning shears and cut around 4 inches from the base of each branch to allow for re-growth. Hopefully, you’d have had the sense to grow your plants organically or buy organically-grown stevia leaves—the extraction process will concentrate the undesirable chemicals found in pesticides!

Prepare the leaves. Strip the leaves off the branches. You can leave the tips of the stems intact. Wash in running water, removing any brown parts as you go.

Dry the leaves. Find yourself an area where it’s nice and dry, away from the busiest areas of your home. Good circulation and direct sunlight are essentials. On a flat screen or net, lay out the stevia leaves to air dry (no more than 12 hours or else the steveosides in the leaves will begin to degrade), checking occasionally. (To be honest, I skipped this step and it didn’t seem to make a difference).

Chop the leaves finely. Proportions will be 2 lightly-packed measuring cups stevia leaves to 1 cup of vodka if you’d like to make a concentrate; and just 1 cup stevia leaves to 4 parts purewater if you want to make some ready-to-use liquid that needs no further dilution before use. Just so you know, the concentrate is better used in cooking and baking, and the liquid is usually used to sweeten drinks.

Steep the leaves in the liquid at least 24 but no more than 48 hours. Steeping for too long can increase the herb’s slightly bitter after-taste. Keep your container covered and shake it gently every so often while steeping.

Strain your steeped mixture through a coffee filter (or cheesecloth, if you have one) to remove the leaves. The resulting liquid will be greenish.

The water mixture is now ready for use. The concentrate has to go through one additional step to evaporate the water: Just simmer for 30 minutes on medium-low heat, and it’s ready.

Refrigerate and use within 3 months.

If you plan to use the extract for baking, you will probably want to know how to replace the bulk you get from regular sugar. I will touch on this in an upcoming blog.

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How to Extract the Natural Sweetness of Stevia