Bottling Sassafras Extract This Week

I got 20 oz of sassafras extract bottled this week.  I LOVE this stuff!

Here's the proceedure:

Dig the roots while the trees are dormant - now is a great time. I like to dig right after a rain. Scrub the roots really well with a stiff brush to get any dirt off. Don't worry if some of the dark bark comes off too, you want the cambrium that lies between the outer bark and inner core anyway. I bring my hand pruners and clip off branches to make peeling easier. Then I use a sharp pocket knife to basically "whittle" the bark off the core. Really small roots can just be cut into small pieces and split in half to expose the sap.

I do my best not to rinse the bark after i have peeled it because you lose some of the flavor. You'll feel it as a slickness on your fingers. I use Everclear for my base because it has a high enough alcohol content to allow me to put the fresh bark in it without worrying about spoilage. I put as much sassafras into the Everclear as it will hold - it won't hurt if some pieces stick out of the liquid. Then I stick it in a dark place for 3-4 weeks, shaking when I remember. The Everclear will turn brown like vanilla and smell strongly of sassafras.

I usually strain out the root and add another batch using the same procedure before I bottle the extract in cleaned out A-1 bottles from Dollar Tree. That's pretty much it! I substitute it for vanilla in pretty much everything. Oh, and it does stain both skin and fabric, so be aware...

And this is why we couldn't have gumbo for Thanksgiving, because there wasn't any of this harvested/rendered yet for the year, and to buy it online would be crazy expensive (no my friend refuses to make gumbo without sassafras, won't touch that premade gumbo file stuff.  She's waiting for her auntie to send some up here from GA in springtime, and then we can make gumbo for some other meal together.  Thanks for teaching me why sassafras is so hard to come by.

Riona Abhainn wrote:And this is why we couldn't have gumbo for Thanksgiving, because there wasn't any of this harvested/rendered yet for the year, and to buy it online would be crazy expensive (no my friend refuses to make gumbo without sassafras, won't touch that premade gumbo file stuff.  She's waiting for her auntie to send some up here from GA in springtime, and then we can make gumbo for some other meal together.  Thanks for teaching me why sassafras is so hard to come by.

I didn't realize the root extract was used in gumbo.  I know the dehydrated and powdered leaves make a really good thickener (I discovered this when making sassafras leaf tea) with some flavor as well and I know they were traditionally used in file powder.  I didn't harvest and powder leaves this year because my dehydrator was in Wyoming and it's too humid in Missouri to air dehydrate anything.  But I picked it up when we visited my family and I'll probably do some next summer.

So many people think you use the entire root, but it's just the cambrium on the outside that has the good stuff in it.  We have TONS of sassafras trees and they grow from root spread, so when I dig one, others spring up the next year.   In fact, I'm trying to clear where we are building the house so I have an excess.  I'm making another batch right now and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with 8 or 9 bottles of the stuff.  I don't bake THAT much!

The way she does is the leaves plus a small amount of the root.