Thursday, May 31, 2007

Making Chlorophyll

There are a few ways to distill Chlorophyll and I like this method prescribed by Sydney Chef Justin North in his book Bécasse.

It uses that much maligned variety of parsley - curly parsley



80 grams picked curly parsley leaves
6 cups water

Wash and dry the parsley leaves.

Place the leaves and water into a blender and process for a few minutes until it forms a bright green liquid.

Strain this through a fine sieve and pour into a saucepan. Over a low heat, stir constantly until you see green particles rising to the surface. It's important that you do this slowly.

Pour this into a container along with a handful of ice and place in the fridge to cool.


This photos illustrates how the mixture will look when cooled - the chlorohyll has separated from the water, it looks very much like algae.

When cold, pour through a muslin lined sieve, don't push the mix through let gravity do it's job. Once drained you can throw away the water. Scrape as much of the green paste that is remaining on the muslin as possible and store in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.

This should give you about 2 tablespoons of Chlorophyll.

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  1. Thank you very much for this lesson Haalo.

  2. It sounds like a very interesting idea, Haalo. But thinking from the culinary side of things, what can the chlorophyll be used for? I've never known or heard of its use in cooking

  3. Thanks Rose.

    Hi Trig - chlorophyll does have it's place in the commercial kitchen - it's used to colour pasta and sauces because it gives you a colour shift without added a taste. It's probably something more associated with molecular gastronomy.

  4. Very exciting - I saw the post where you used this to colour ice cream!

  5. Oh how clever! Bravo!

  6. Thanks Pille!

    Thanks Truffle!

  7. Very interesting post. I never thought about making chlorophyll before.

  8. saw it being made in a rest i worked in sydney and couldnt remember how to do it. Now you have helped me remember. thank you. also make sure you store it in a black container as to keep it away from light.

  9. I've linked to your post! Well done, I too worked in a restaurant and forget the exact process. Great blog by the way!


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