Homemade Vitamin C Powder
I rarely get sick, but when I do, I get really sick, and it tends to stick around for a long time. Naturally, when I do get sick, I depend on medicines and other remedies to help me heal. I can’t do it all without any help after all! But I do try to keep my medicine -like my food- as natural and homemade as possible when I can.
One of my favourite remedies for colds and sore throats is Vitamin C powder. If you’ve never tried it, it’s basically a tangy, orange-flavoured, powdered form of Vitamin C that’s sold at drugstores. But I don’t love that there are added ingredients to give it flavour and god only knows what else. I prefer to go all-natural and homemade instead of packaged and store-bought whenever I can. So this time around, I decided to make my own Vitamin C powder.
Homemade Vitamin C powder made from 100% oranges.
I already had some dried orange slices that I dehydrated in my Excalibur Food Dehydrator earlier this year. So I threw a few slices in my food processor and blended them up until they were broken up into tiny bits. But the food processor couldn’t grind the oranges into powder-fine pieces, so I took the bits and put them into our coffee grinder to get a real fine grind.
Once I turned the dried orange slices to powder, I boiled some water and stirred the powder into the hot water until it began to dissolve. Then I added some honey and voilà! I successfully made homemade Vitamin C powder that was naturally orange-flavoured (because it’s actually made of 100% oranges) and packed with naturally-occurring Vitamin C. It tasted great and definitely helped soothe my throat. Plus, it didn’t give me any weird side effects like shakiness or anxiety, which I often get from pharmaceutical meds.
Related: Traditional Fire Cider Recipe
One note: while the store-bought powdered Vitamin C dissolves completely in liquid, this homemade version leaves a little bit of “sediment” at the bottom of your mug. But since this is made of real fruit, a little sediment is to be expected.
Also, you don’t need to use whole dried orange slices to make this. In fact, most of the Vitamin C is actually concentrated in the peels, so if you save your peels (which you should as long as they’re organic) then you can dry them and then grind them up to make this powder.
I do recommend storing the dried oranges or peels whole and grinding as needed instead of storing in powdered form. This is simply because it will lose flavour and nutrients faster when it is ground up real fine, similar to storing coffee beans vs. ground coffee.
In the end, I got a natural cold remedy that helped me feel a little more human and gave me the energy I needed to face the day. I’m happy to say that I’m finally feeling like myself again and I did it without having to step foot in a pharmacy. So save those orange peels and dry them out! Another cold and flu season is just around the corner, and you definitely won’t regret having some of this homemade vitamin c powder on hand when it does.
Homemade Vitamin C Powder
Ingredients
- 2 or 3 slices of organic dried oranges (or peels)
Instructions
- To dry, wash oranges well and then slice into ¼-inch thick rounds, leaving the peel on. Then you can either air dry, oven dry or (my favourite) use a food dehydrator. Each method requires different temperatures and drying times. If using an Excalibur food dehydrator (like I did), dehydrate at 125-135 degrees until orange peels are brittle (5 to 12 hours). You can also dry just the peels and use them in lieu of whole slices.
- Break dried orange slices or peels into small bits. I used a food processor to do this.
- Transfer smaller bits to a coffee grinder (electric works best but you could use a hand-grinder). Make sure the grinder is set to the fine-grind setting and is clean so no coffee residue gets mixed in. Grind dried oranges into a fine powder.
- Transfer powder to a mug and add boiling water. Stir until water turns orange and powder is well-mixed.
- Add honey if desired and enjoy hot!
- Get well soon.
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Homesteading is a year-round lifestyle, and
for whatever reason, homesteading is most often thought of as a three-season “activity.”
1. 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨.
2. 𝘎𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘴𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳.
3. 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘶𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭.
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Happy homesteading!
0 Comments?
What happened to the one I made earlier this morning?
Simply pointing out that excessive heat destroys the very Vitamin C
you are trying to obtain.
Boiling water is way too hot!
Also, it would be helpful to give more facts ,
such as the estimated amount of vitamin C in orange/citrus fruits, peels, etc. , that we can expect through this process.
It is an especially good idea to save the peels, since they contain a higher concentration of the vitamin, and are usually discarded otherwise.
Weel here’s hoping that my comment will be retained this time.
Thanks
Hi Dean,
My apologies that your comment this morning was not approved as quickly as you would have liked. I do manually have to review all comments and until now I was getting my child to school and getting a workout in at the gym.
Interesting point about the boiling water. I’ll take that into consideration. This is actually one of the first blog posts I ever wrote and am definitely not a health professional so I cannot say for sure how much vitamin C is in the peels. This is simply one of the things we do in our house when we are feeling sick and run down and it seems to work quite well. I do know that the essential oils are in the peels and that contains the highest concentration of medicinal properties. However you may choose to do a cold infusion instead. Again, this is what works for me and my family, but I am not a certified herbalist or a medical doctor.
It can be warm- vitamin c degrades at 136 degrees
Good point! Thanks
Unfortunately, you destroy most if not all of the Vitamin C
with the boiling water.
Homemade vitamins are a great idea, but this method is going to
need to be “adjusted”, somehow.
Maybe just skip the “boiling” step.