Homemade carrot oil, easy to prepare

Carrot oil is a very popular product in cosmetics.  Many different manufacturers are making it and it is available in almost every shop selling beauty products. Carrot oil is a product that you could make at home, if you have the time. As a multipurpose product, you can use home-made carrot oil in many ways.

Choose the right carrier oil for your carrot oil

Commercially available carrot oils often contain many different ingredients. Their oils are blended with many different oils suitable for skin care. Now you can choose the best oils for your own carrot oil.

In fact, I use sunflower oil most often to extract carrot oil. Other suitable oils are

• rice bran
• Soybean Oil
• Safflower oil
• Avocado oil

It is never a good idea to choose expensive oils for making extracts. Light, mild oil is the best carrier oil. Always choose organic oil that has been produced by cold pressing (Virgin quality). If you need to choose between organic or cold pressed oil, prefer the cold pressed. Cold pressed oil is rich in vitamin E. Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant that also affects the shelf life of the final product. If you cannot find cold pressed oil, you have to add vitamin E to improve the shelf life of the oil extract.

With special oils you’ll get additional healing ingredients to oil extract

You can use special oils rich in antioxidants for the herbal oil. There is no need to use only expensive special oils, you can make a mixture. If you wish, you can make several small batches of carrot oil using a variety of special oils. I personally prefer very simple products with up to two different oils. However, if you wish, you can mix 4-5 different oils together to create your own oil.

Special oils are often expensive. Therefore, use them with caution. Below I have listed some particularly good special oils.

• Rosehip Seed Oil
• Carrot Seed Oil
• Jojoba oil
• Argan oil

Carrot is the most important ingredient in carrot oil

You cannot use just any carrot for carrot oil. I use organic, dried carrot myself. Dried carrots are much easier to handle in oil extractions than fresh carrots.

If you make an oil extract using a fresh carrot, there is too much water in it. Water is not a good thing in oil extracts. You must definitely get the water out of the oil to prevent the oil from spoiling. Dehydrating the oil takes several days and is laborious. Therefore, I recommend using only dried carrots for this product.

I drained the carrots I am using by myself. Dried carrots are hard to find, especially in late winter.

The carrot is easy to dry

• Grate two large carrots (no need to peel) and sprinkle evenly on baking sheet. Use baking paper
• turn on the oven to 100 degrees Celsius.
• Put the carrot plate into the oven and leave the door slightly open
• Allow the grated carrots to remain in the oven until dry (about 2-3 hours)
• Turn the grated carrots around, it helps them to dry

Dried and grated carrots can be used as such for extraction.

Making of homemade carrot oil

Now that you have selected the right oil and have dried, grated carrots, you can start making the oil extract

• Pour grated carrots into a steel bowl
• Add 3 decilitres of your oil, your choice (enough to cover all carrots)
• Lift the bowl into the water bath (double boiler) on top of the pot.
• Do not let the bottom of the bowl touch the water.
• Heat up the water bath so that the water is bubbling and steamy but not yet boiling
• Allow the carrot oil mixture to remain in the water bath for 1½ hours, stirring occasionally
• Remove the carrot oil mixture from the water bath and let it cool down for a while
• Filter the oil mixture through a gauze cloth.

Now you have the homemade carrot oil extract ready to use for skin care. It is ready to use but if you want to tune it up  you can add other ingredients into it.

How to make homemade carrot oil?

You need

• 60 ml of carrot oil
• 20 ml of special oils of your choice
• 10 ml glycerol to provide moisture (optional)
• Essential oils to have a scent (optional)
• Vitamin E drops in case the oil you used was not cold pressed

Do like this:

You can add am. ingredients to the carrot oil without using a preservative or emulsifier. However, to improve shelf life, you need to heat the whole mixture (no essential oils or vitamin E) for 30 minutes at 80 degrees. This will ensure the shelf life of the product.

Bottle the ready-made product immediately into clean, sterilized bottles and seal using cork stoppers. Remember to label your products!  Remark the ingredients (INCI) and the date of manufacture and expiry date on the bottle.

To calculate the expiration date of your carrot oil, look at the expiration dates of the oils you used. Deduct 2 months from the date of the oil whose expiry date is nearest in the future.

Your homemade carrot oil is now ready

It likes a very cool place, protected from light. Carrot oil does not tolerate light at all.

Use carrot oil as a skin serum with night cream. You can also mix carrot oil with your daily cream you use.

More about carrot in skin care

Are you inspired to make your own carrot oil?   Please let me know me how you did it!

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