How to Make Leaf Concentrate at Home

Leaf concentrate is a super-nutritious food, maybe the most nutritious of all foods. It is basically a curd, like cottage cheese or tofu, except that it is made from leaf juice rather than milk or soybeans.

Economics favor making leaf concentrate on a scale that is large enough to justify the cost of specialized equipment, but it can certainly be made on a household scale using familiar kitchen equipment. Very small batches may not be worth the effort because of the amount of clean up required. The steps to making leaf concentrate are similar at every scale.

• First, harvest the leaves and rinse them in clean water.
• Then cut them into pieces no longer than you finger
• Then grind or pulp the leaves. This breaks open the leaf cell walls and frees up the nutrients within the cells.
• Next squeeze or press the leaf pulp to separate leaf juice from the fiber.
• Then heat the leaf juice quickly to the boiling point, while stirring gently. Heat causes the proteins and oils in the leaf juice to form a curd (like green tofu or cottage cheese) that floats to the top.
• Next skim off the green curd and press or squeeze it to remove as much liquid as possible.
• This moist leaf curd is leaf concentrate. It can be eaten fresh or dried for later use.

We'll go over these steps in a minute, but first, you need to decide which leaves you are going to use to make the concentrate. Not all edible leaves make a good concentrate. Some, like lettuce, don't have enough protein. Some like vine spinach will make a slimy mess when you grind them. Some are too dry, and some are too acidic.

Here are some of the best leaf crops for home gardeners to try.

• Cowpeas (Black-eyed peas are a well-known variety of cowpea, but there are many others)
• Hyacinth bean.
• Austrian winter pea

It is no accident that the first three are legumes. They can fix nitrogen from the air and usually have high levels of protein. Cowpeas and hyacinth beans are summer crops, but Austrian winter peas can handle temperature below freezing so it is a good crop to grow when most of your garden is dormant for the winter.

Wheat and Barley are familiar grain crops. Both have edible high nutrition leaves that can be harvested before the seed begins forming. They are both good leaf concentrate crops, that also can thrive in cold temperatures. Winter peas and barley can also be grown together or intercropped.

Nettles and Lamb's quarters are two weedy plants that can be used. Nettles often grows in dense patches near rich moist riverbanks. Lamb's quarters is a familiar garden and barnyard weed. Moringa is a very productive small tropical tree with extremely nutritious leaves.

There are many other plants that can be used for making leaf concentrate, but these are a good starting point.

So let's make some leaf concentrate.

• First strip the leaves off the stems, and rinse them well in clean water.
• Then cut the leaves into pieces the length of a finger.
• Then grind or pulp the leaves. For folks without electricity, a manual meat grinder works pretty well. Adding a flywheel makes the cranking a little easier. Using an electric blender is even easier. Generally, blenders with over 1000 watts of power work well. Check the wattage on the bottom of a blender before buying one. Cheap blenders tend to be underpowered for making leaf concentrate.
• Add about a liter of water to the blender and turn it on the highest setting. Gradually feed the cut leaves through the hole in the blender lid. Stop when the blender seems to be struggling. This will vary a lot with blenders.
  
• Next pour the pulped leaves from the blender into a colander lined with a strong nylon cloth.
• Then squeeze or press the leaf pulp as much as possible to separate leaf juice from the fiber. You can try wringing the pulp using a stick for leverage if you need more force, though it is easy to tear the filter cloth with this technique.
• After you have separated as much juice as possible from the fiber, heat the leaf juice quickly to the boiling point while stirring gently. The heat causes the proteins and oils in the leaf juice to form a curd that floats to the top. Stirring gently keeps the curd from burning on the bottom of the pot. Make sure you get to a full boil. The curd will begin forming before the juice boils, but a rolling boil assures that all the curd has formed and gives you greater safety from any pathogens left on the leaves. A few seconds of a full boil is enough.
• Next skim off the green curd, drain and let cool.
• Press or squeeze through a strong cotton cloth to remove as much liquid as possible. We usually used unbleached muslin, but any cloth about as strong as blue jean material will work. This moist leaf curd is leaf concentrate. It should be squeezed dry enough to be somewhat crumbly. This takes some force and patience. It can be used directly or dried for later use.

Enriched lemonade is one of the best ways to use fresh leaf concentrate. The vitamin C in the lemons or limes makes the iron in the concentrate more usable by your body.

If you are drying it for later use, rubbing the curd through a ¼ inch screen will help it dry quicker and more evenly. A simple solar leaf dryer works well for drying the curd.

The process breaks the leaves into three parts: the leaf concentrate, the fiber, and the left over liquid, which is similar to the ‘whey' when making cheese. ‘Whey' should be tea-colored and not cloudy.

This chart shows a rough breakdown of the three fractions of the leaves. About 5% leaf concentrate, 45% fiber, and 50 percent ‘whey'.

A spoonful of leaf concentrate adds a lot of protein, iron, calcium, and vitamin A to the diet. It generally has a mild grassy flavor and can be added to a lot of traditional recipes. It can be very helpful for people recovering from illness or anyone who needs a little extra boost in their diet.

The fiber is an excellent feed for cows, horses, sheep, goats, and rabbits (though it probably too calcium-rich to be a good primary feed for rabbits over six months old). Chickens and pigs often eat the fiber but, like us, they can't digest the cellulose, so it doesn't do them much good. Usually, it takes animals a week or so to get used to this new feed.

For kitchen gardeners, the best use of the stems and fiber left from making leaf concentrate is usually the simplest: returning it to the garden as mulch or compost. These leftovers make excellent mulch. The liquid, or whey, remaining from making concentrate can also be returned to your garden. It contains enough nitrogen and potassium to be valuable as a liquid fertilizer. It should be diluted with an equal volume of water before putting it on your garden.

Making leaf concentrate at home is a lot of work. But it is an interesting food to make at least once. And it can make a big difference in the health of malnourished kids and people with chronic illnesses.

Thanks for watching.

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