Did you know you can make homemade extracts with just a few simple ingredients for much cheaper than the store bought extracts? Learn how to make homemade mint extract with just 2 ingredients!
I have been making homemade vanilla extract for years. It’s crazy easy! I just add a little vodka to the vanilla beans in my bottle when it starts to get low. But it never occurred to me that I could be making all kinds of different flavors of extract. I was perusing an online magazine on Yahoo in December when I ran across an article about making homemade extracts.
How to Make Homemade Mint Extract with 2 Ingredients
I knew that mint would be the easiest one to make. I already have a huge bottle of vodka on hand. All I needed was some fresh mint. I kind of forgot about wanting to try making homemade extracts until I spied some fresh mint on sale on a recent trip to the grocery store.
I had purchased these glass bottles on a whim in December – probably to try making hot sauce – and they looked perfect for steeping a trial batch of mint extract. I prefer to start with a small batch just to make sure it’s going to work before I set up a big bottle. Plus, I just don’t really use mint extract as often as I do vanilla so a small bottle will last me awhile. But extract does take a few months to steep so if you use a lot of it, you may want to go ahead and make a larger batch.
I plucked off some mint leaves and used a wooden skewer to get them down in to the bottle. I just guessed at how many leaves to use. I’d say I used about 6 or 7 leaves total. Then I poured the vodka in to the bottle and screwed on the cap. I’ll let the extract sit for a few months and check to see if it’s ready.
I’ve read different opinions about what kind of vodka to use in homemade extracts. Some people say to use only high quality and other people say it doesn’t matter. I lean towards the cheap stuff and it seems fine to me, but then again, I’ve never used the high end vodka either.
And that’s it! Next up I’m hoping to try a few fruit flavored homemade extracts and maybe even some nuts. I’m super excited to see how this homemade mint extract turns out in a few months time.
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