To extract juice from palm nuts:
Wash palm nuts very well and place in a pot, add enough water to cover the nuts.
Boil for 30 minutes till the flesh of the palm nut is soft. It should easily split when pressed with the fingers.
Drain palm nuts into a mortar, discarding the water it was boiled in. Using a pestle, pound while still hot to separate the flesh from the nuts and turn it into a pulp. The pulp should be a bright even orange colour at this stage. Try not to break the nuts, some might break but it won’t affect the taste.
Scoop the pulp into a large bowl and add enough of the hot water to just cover the pulp. Leave to stand till it has cooled down enough to be handled.
Use your hand or a spoon to squeeze and stir it around a few times, pour into a sieve placed over another large bowl.
Squeeze out the juice still in the chaff, you can pick out as much of the kernels as you can to make this more efficient.
If you have not worked the pulp well enough, you will still have quite some extract left in the chaff. Add a little more hot water and repeat the stirring and straining through the sieve. Strain the extract again. You will be left with this.
Leave to stand for 1 minute to settle down, gently pour into a pot being careful not to pour in the very last bit of the extract to prevent any debris from entering the pot.
Boil over high heat to cook for about 10 minutes, you will start noticing red oil on the surface, your extract is ready, use for your recipe.
I normally make a large batch, then boil down to the consistency of custard or close to canned palm fruit concentrate.
I store this concentrate in the freezer and rehydrate with stock and water when needed.
Palm nut juice is used in cooking Ofè akwú, banga soup, bitterleaf soup (onugbu soup), abak atama, Ora (uha) soup, utazi soup, obe eyin, akwu stew, okpa, etc
GLICE & GREEN KITCHEN 