Black oil sunflower seeds and endless cooking oil

A cheap garden filler and a great add to you prep's Black Oil Sunflower seeds. You can get these by the pounds in the bird seed section of the store (CHEAP).

These beauty's can be planted in that empty area of your yard....they even attract all kinds of birds.

But why am I telling you to plant them ....because they are a high oil seed!!!

These plant can provide you with your cooking oil for the year and after the first bag of seeds...you will not have in invest any more money in this...(always making sure to save seeds for the next crop.  

Simplest method: Fill a cloth bag with ground seed pulp and hang the bag to drain. The free run oil will flow out and the rest must be squeezed. This will not work with all seeds but I know it works with sunflowers.
This can be done by any of the following methods:

• Place heavy rocks on the materials.

• Place bags of oil seed pulp, one above another, in a box or cylinder and apply great pressure.

• Create a press with any available materials, such as wood or metal, placing the seed material in the press in layers, separating each layer, by a press cloth. Slowly apply pressure, gradually increasing pressure as oil is expelled.

• Create an expeller or continuous Screw Press by means of a rotating auger inside a closed barrel with one hole for oil drainage.

Next simplest method

• First you have to store the seeds so they dry out.

• Make sure you have not stones or foreign stuff in the seeds (This can be done by screening and washing)

• Then the hard part they have to be shelled.....yes sadly.  But if you are making oil for just you consumption it will not be that bad). I would just lay them on a flat area and gently crush them with a rolling pin and pick out the seeds.

• Then you need to grind them to get that inner shell  off. (you can use a grain mill, even a juicer, I tried it with my bullet and it worked fine.

• Next you should heat the seeds...now you do not have heat them to get the oil..but with all that hard work above you want to make sure you get every drop of oil out of these seeds that you can. Heating them up does that.

Now here is the part you have to decide do you want to buy a press.....I would hold off till you are sure that you will be using it a lot and that you will have the crop to make it worth it.

You can simply use a wooden mortar and pestle at first.  I got mine at the dollar store. And I drilled a small hole in the side/bottom part so the oil just comes out into a pan I have under it.

Some county's still do it this way with a much larger mortar

 I did come across this great diogram of how to build a larger press

Or you can again simply buy the press.







Song for this post is going to be Lenny Kravitz Feat. Drake SUNFLOWER (this is not one of my fav's of Lenny's song but what the hey figured I post it anyway.