Wednesday, December 06, 2006

The Making of Shea Butter Part 1-The Traditional Process

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How does the picture to the left, which is shea fruit, become shea butter?

Many of you are aware that most of the commercially available Shea Butter that you see in stores today has been extracted using a toxic and dangerous petroleum by-product called hexane. However, there are several companies that use only Shea Butter that has been traditionally extracted such as Purely Shea.

Here is how Purely Shea Shea Butter is made using traditional shea butter processing method WITHOUT chemicals.

1. The fallen fruit from the Karite Tree (Shea Tree) has become ripe and falls to the ground and is picked-up by women.

2. The fresh fruit is then eaten leaving behind the shea kernel.

3. The kernels are sorted and hand-washed with fresh clean water.

4. Next, the kernels are boiled and then allowed to sun dry.

5. Then, the nuts are pounded with traditional wood pestles and placed in cast iron kettles and dry roasted.

6. The dry roasted kernels are ground to produce a paste which is then hand mixed and kneaded with hot water. It at this step that you finally have Shea Butter.

7. After this, the shea butter is purified by heating with clean water where the impurities fall to the bottom.

8. Finally, the shea butter is filtered when poured in to clean stainless steel storage drums.

Steph,

Purely Shea

http://www.purelyshea.com

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