WriteAright-A 5 day Writing Challenge:How to Produce Palm oil(Red oil) from Palm fruit
Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to my blog.I wish to make my third entry for the ongoing contest in Steemalive community.
In this post I want to explain how to produce palm oil from Palm fruit.In Nigeria especially the south eastern part of the country.Palm oil is a very important item.It could be used for cooking, baking, making soap,detergents etc.Basically it is used for cooking in my place.You can barely prepare soup without palmoil.So It is a very important product.
Procedure for Producing Palmoil
•Cutting the palm fruit
This process involves cutting the palm fruit from the palm tree.Once it is ripe,it would cut and brought home for the next stage.
•Separating the palmfruit from the bunch
When the palmfruit was cut from the tree.It is usually in a bunch with sharp thorns.It has to be separated from the bunch using a machete.This process is tedious and requires patience and carefulness.
While still in bunch
•Picking
The next step is picking.It involves manually picking the palmfruit one after the other.This is primarily done to make sure that the thorns are not mixed with the real palmfruit.Proper car should be taken to avoid been injured by the thorns.
•Cooking the palmfruit
After the picking.It is now time to put all the palmfruit in a big pot and set it on fire.The cooking is done inorder to soften the fruit ams make it easy for pounding.It would be allowed to boil and soften very well.
cooking process
•Pounding the palmfruit
The next step is pounding.It is pounded while it is still hot.So one person pounds and the other person introduces the hot palmfruit into the big mortar as pounding is going on.
Inside the mortar after pounding
This is a mechanical work and requires strength.In the course of the pounding,the red oil still start gushing out and the whole content would be introduced into a manually extractor.
•Extraction of the oil
A manual extractor is used to squeeze our red oil from the pounded content.The red oil would be dripping into a containers kept under the extractor.
It is obvious that the whole red oil won't come out at this point.So the chaff of the extracted content would be introduced into a basin full of water where it would be washed to separate the palm kernel-another important palmfruit product.That washing water is now shaken properly and the upper part which contains oil could be carefully collected with the palm and then transfered into another pot.It would them be allowed to boil and the the oily part of also extracted.This is the last point of palmoil extraction.The red oil can now be stored in containers for sell or usage.
Final stage
Summary
In summary the processes as explained is how palmoil is produced manual in the Eastern part of Nigeria.Almost every household makes use of palmoil for one reason or the other.Palm oil can also be taken as a first aid when one swallows a poisonous substances.At the moment a litre of palm oil costs over 3 Steem.
Honestly to produce red oil is not easy. It requires strength and Tim to do it. Well I have not done it before, and am not thinking of doing it because is too stressful. Thanks so much for showing us the steps of production. Let them produce I buy from the market. 😀
It's been long I saw palm fruits being pounded in a mortar.
We now use processing engine to pound ours.
Nice post you have there but I must admit that oil processing is not an easy task oo
Well-done sir
I know how it is being processed,I used to do it when I travel to the village ,that’s a beautiful content you have 😊😊
Thank you @samuel20 for showing me the process it takes to produce palm oil. Although palmoil business is lucrative but from what you explained, i think its really a very stressful one which requires time and human energy.
Yes it is stressful especially when you are using the methods that I described here (manual method).There are presently mechanized methods been used in some places now.Thanks for reading through @ruthjoe
Yes you are so right. Technology is making work easy for us.
You are welcome
You've got a free upvote from witness fuli.
Peace & Love!
The process is too unique,I love it but I think is stressful. Thank you for showing us the steps to take
You see the picking process of palm oil making is the most stressful side of it, but once the oil is ready I love seeing it and I enjoy using it for boiled yam
The process is over stressful, but we all need red oil to cook, I like the method of
processing it with engine instead of pounding them.
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