Making Curcumin from Turmeric Root.

As you will recall, curcumin is the active ingredient in turmeric root. It is bright orangish-red in color and will stain everything it comes in contact with. I sprinkle a pinch or two of curcumin powder on everything I cook. Turmeric root is expensive, costing about $8.00 a pound at a produce market, so if you have the time and space, it pays to grow your own root. Turmeric root is very slow growing and will take nearly a year to mature and be ready for harvest. Be aware of the fact that some of the turmeric root sold in supermarkets has been treated with a chemical to suppress growth, this makes it almost impossible to grow in the garden. Once you have the root converting it to Curcumin is relatively simple, if a bit laborious and expensive. The first step is to boil the root for approximately 45 minutes. Next, place the root in a pan of cold water to cool it. The root is difficult to slice if still hot from the boiling process. At this point, the root must be sliced into 3 to 4 mm pieces so it can be dried. I dry the sliced pieces of root in a dehydrator at 400 degrees F for 24 hours. Dehydrators are expensive, but I know of no practical alternative to a commercial grade dehydrator when it comes to drying the root. Place the turmeric slices on one of the dehydrator racks, set the drying time and temperature and forget about it. Remove the dried root from the racks in 24 hours. At this point the slices will be hard as a rock. The next step is to grind the dried pieces of turmeric root into a powder. This step is performed with a commercial grade heavy duty vegetable grinder. At this point, the finely ground Curcumin is ready to use. Remember, you have to add black pepper to the curcumin if it is to be taken orally and absorbed from the intestinal tract. A ratio of four parts curcumin to one-part black pepper works well. In any case, this, obviously, is very time consuming and expensive process which explains, in part, the high cost of commercial Curcumin products sold on the internet and elsewhere. I’ll have more to say about the value of these Curcumin based products in my next post.