Pandan juice cultivation

 

Pandan juice extracted from Pandan Leaves.

Extracting pandan juice can be a hussle. In the old times, we will pound it in a mortar and extract the juice by placing the crushed pandan leaves on a white cloth.

Nowadays, pandan juice can be done by the help of a blender. However I often find that the juice became diluted as we need to add water to the blender before we can blend the pandan leaves. I am going to share some tips here on how to cultivate the pandan juice of our choices. 

I usually have the pandan juice extracted at one go and use them within a few days. So far I tried using them for 3 days by storing them in a refrigerator and it worked well.

First, I will wash all the leaves and cut them into 2 inches long.

First I will grind them in a grinding machine. 

After that, transfer the grinded pandan leaves to the blender. Add some water (just enough for blending machine to move).  Blend the grinded pandan leaves until we can see that the juice is being extracted and the leaves were quite smashed up. By doing the grinding step, it will help in the blending process.

Place a straining cloth over a sieve. Empty the pandan mixture from the blender. Squeeze the juice out and you will ended up with the pandan pulp. 

The juice cultivated here will be the best juice. Leave it to stand for 4 hours and we will see that the concentrated green juice will settle to the lower of the bottom of the container. (Use a glass to help to see the separation). I usually pour the clearer juice on the top to another container. I will use the darker ones that has sunk to the bottom for my cake for its best flavour.

As for the plup, do not throw. We can use it to boil in water for another lot of pandan juice. 

By placing the plup and water in the pot and boil over 15 mins, we can cultivate some pandan water. Though not concentrated, it can be used for making jelly or steam kueh with a pandan flavour.

I usually freeze this pandan water and it can be kept for a month for other desserts that do not require the colouring or strong flavour.