Essential oils are those which are filled with concentrated fragrance and distilled from the specific plant leaves. These oils are mostly chosen in the aromatherapy as they strongly smell. Now when it comes to the fragrance or aroma who can ever forget about the fresh mint smell? The relaxing and mind blooming smell of mint leaves is really a waking up. Preparing Peppermint Essential oil at home is as easy as a kids play. Very few reachable ingredients and a bunch of fresh Mint/Menthol leaves along with hygiene steps results aromatic peppermint oil.
Ingredients:
- Carrier oil
- Fresh Mint Leaves
Items:
- Strainer/ hygiene cloth
- Wide mouthed bottle
- Container
- Air tight bottle
Steps to Prepare Peppermint Essential Oil
Collect a bunch of mint leaves from the vegetable market or you can even grow them in your garden. Mint leaves are very easily grown and cover the entire area sooner with very less care and concern. The advantage of using the garden grown Mint leaves is you need not fear of the quality and the prepared oil seems to be a perfect homemade product.
Clean the mint leaves and spread them to dry.
Once dry, chop these fresh mint leaves along a chopping board finely. You can make use of the ancient device mortar and pestle generally used for crushing ingredients, but make sure you do not make a paste of mint leaves. The leaves should only be crushed so that it spread all its essential oils.
Warm the carrier oil slightly for 5 to 10 minutes in low flame.
Now take a clean wide mouthed bottle and fill the chopped mint leaves. To this add 2 cups of heated carrier oil and shake well so that the leaves are completely submerged. Chose any carrier oil of your choice, I have chosen coconut oil as it is a light smelling and has enormous beauty benefits. Any other vegetable oil can be used as a base.
Close the lid of the bottle and keep it away from air and moist for 24 hours. Disturb the bottle with a slight shake at intervals of 3 to 4 hours so that mint leaves spreads all its aroma and essentials into the carrier oil.
Take a clean strainer or a hygiene cloth and filter all the used leaves pouring the oil to a clean container placed underneath. Residue leaves are a waste and can be discarded.
Transfer the peppermint oil to an air tight nozzle bottle to ease its usage. The oil does not require any conditions for its storage and remains to be intact for a minimum of 4 months.