Kick that illness FAST with FIRE CIDER

[Music] as we move into fall not only do we need to preserve our food but we want to have our medicinal natural remedies that we're going to be using during cold and flu season to already be on hand and at the ready so one of the beautiful and one of my most favorite things to make and have on hand is fire cider and that's because pretty much all of the ingredients that i need to make fire cider already are growing on the homestead or you can really easily get if you don't have these crops going and as i'm pulling these in order to preserve them fire cider is one of the ways that i actually can preserve them and it becomes our medicine so up first you're going to want to have a medium onion so i'm pulling this was the last onion that was left in the garden so getting that guy in here and then the garlic we already have pulled and i have just finished curing up here drying before we braid it and bring it in the house so i'm going to go ahead and pull oh let's get a medium-sized bulb or head of garlic there so we've got that one and now we are going to go over it's at the very end of the warm weather season and we're going to be getting into the pepper patch so we want to get some really nice hot peppers the hottest peppers that i grow i'm not a huge fan of a real bunch of heat is jalapenos so really you can use any type of hot pepper that you want in here i like to use jalapenos i'm going to get some of these bigger guys down here that have been in here a while that will have a lot of nice heat for this batch and then it's really funny one of the great things about doing herbal medicine and making your own medicine is you can control the ingredients that go in it so you'll find that fire cider while most fire cider recipes kind of have the same base of ingredients you definitely can play with some of the things that you're putting in there so one of the things that i like to add in there are some herbs so i'm going to be adding in to this batch some thyme and some rosemary so i'm going to come to the front of this rosemary bush where i have a little bit more vibrant fresh growth that i haven't harvested off of lately and we'll get some good sprigs there and then we're going to go and grab a little bit of thyme and kind of the same thing we're just going to come and harvest right where it's nice and vibrant green and isn't showing any signs of dying back or stress from the heat of summer and i will be releasing a video that goes more into depth upon using these culinary herbs and their medicinal properties my top five next week but we'll be grabbing two of my top five to put them into this fire cider recipe so let's go in the house prep these ingredients and talk about the rest that we're going to be adding in so we have rinsed off all of the ingredients and peeled those that needed to be peeled i've got my herbs that are drying here on the towel so let's go ahead and get these prepped we're going to actually be infusing these in vinegar so anytime that we are infusing something it's better if you have more cut up surface area than just putting it in whole so for our onion we are going to dice it and onion is the first ingredient that we're going to be using in our fire cider an onion is actually high in vitamin c it also has anti-inflammatory anti-cholesterol anti-cancer and antioxidant properties and it happens to taste pretty good as well so let's get that i'm not worried about getting this finely minced but we do want to get this chopped up so i like to have my canning jar wide mouth is just easier to stuff stuff into when you're using your hands but i also like to use a funnel because i tend to be a little bit messy in the kitchen and this just helps obviously hence the name funnel funnel everything into the jar rather than letting it get all over the countertop so we're going to add these in those sulfur compounds are already going to work my eyes are beginning to water so i'm actually going to set this aside as we prep our next round of ingredients and we are going to then move in with our garlic now for the exact amounts i use a medium onion i put all of this into a quart sized jar but if you want the exact amounts that i'm using for each of these and the written notes in the written recipe you can go to the blog post that has that has a printable recipe card right beneath the video we will have the link to that now for the garlic we're looking to get approximately a quarter cup of diced garlic so we need to get all of this smashed and peeled and when i'm doing a lot of cloves like this i find it easier to use a bench knife so i'm going to use a wooden bench knife to get these guys smashed and peeled it's just a larger surface area and i tend to be accident prone and that way i'm not going to cut myself with a knife so you can see look gorgeously smashed and then we are just going to remove that all righty so now i'm just going to come through and we're just going to do a rough chop kind of between die a little bit of mincing i'm not worried if this is really finely minced but we want to definitely release all of the compounds in there now when it comes to the medicinal properties of garlic we have allicin and that is released when it is chopped or chewed so that's why i'm not just smashing these and putting them in there that i'm actually cutting these up and it's inactivated by cooking but we are not cooking this we are using this raw in our fire cider and it has demonstrated antiviral properties in vitro against both rhinovirus and several other strains and when participants of a specific study which i will have links to the studies that i'm talking about in that blog post with the printable version of it when they took 180 milligrams of alice ellen daily they reported 64 fewer colds and symptom durations were reduced by 70 percent now the next ingredient and you will see based upon medical conditions what you have growing what you have available that it will change slightly different variations of fire cider a lot of traditional recipes or herbalists like to use horseradish root now horseradish is very hot but i happen to have thyroid issues and so i choose to leave horseradish root out one it's not one that we're growing so it's something that i would have to buy from the store but two because i do use the fire cider and with thyroid issues i choose to leave horseradish root out but it is something that you will commonly see and it is definitely an option to use in your fire cider now the next thing that we're going to be putting in is our ginger and i leave the peppers for last just because i don't want the i don't want the pepper juices all over the kitchen they're going to be the very last thing that we put in so next up we have got our ginger root so i want a half a cup of ginger root and if you've never used fresh ginger root before ideally when you buy it from the store wherever you're getting it you don't want it to be wrinkled so we want it to be plump and fresh with lots of the juice in there so i'm going to be focusing on this part of the root as far as putting it in for this recipe and kind of leaving this where it's just a little bit more wrinkly and shrivelly but fresh is ideal you can freeze ginger root which i have done if you're not going to use all of it or to have it on hand but i find it easiest to peel it by just taking a spoon and then getting in there and just kind of peeling off like that with the back of or the side i should say of the spoon so ginger root especially the fresh juice that we're getting because we're using this fresh root that will be extracted into the fire cider has both anti-inflammatory and warming properties so it's going to help stimulate the circulation system which when you have a cold can be a really great thing both the anti-inflammatory properties and the warming but ginger root also has antiviral properties for both the flu influenza and cold viruses however and i will have notes on some of these different ones when you're using them in medicinal quantities i should say or using them beyond just culinary medicinal wise when you should be using precautions or contraindications and ginger is one that if you have a blood clotting disorder or you're on blood thinning medications you really need to proceed with caution that's also something on in my herb course that we go over in great detail is safety as well as when to use them and so you can get on the wait list for a bunch of sneak peeks and extra resources and information on using herbs medicinally at home at meliskaynors.com forward slash herb class okay so here is our half a cup of diced fresh ginger root and we're going to be adding that to our jar of goodies here yeah pretty much all of them are at i tell you what this is smelling fantastic and i'm gonna go ahead and add it's about a tablespoon one to two tablespoons of fresh herbs and so i am really just kind of guessing at this it's going to be pretty close with these sprigs and you can kind of crush them you're going to smell the aromatics which is fabulous as you're putting them in here and stripping the leaves which is good because the crushed part is going to help release them which is why you don't really want to crush herbs when you're harvesting them you want to be crushing them or smashing them up right at the time of use so that those aromatics and medicinal properties are released when you're using them not when you are harvesting them we've only got three more ingredients to put in here we have got a quarter teaspoon of dried cayenne pepper i don't grow cayenne so we've got this for additional heat i'm going to go ahead and toss that in there and i saved our peppers for last now i like to use jalapenos you really can use any hot pepper that you like because what we're after the property of the pepper and why we're putting it in here is we want the capsaicin so capsaicin is found in hot peppers including jalapenos and cayenne to name a few capsaicin helps improve the circulatory system so when we're cold right warming herbs and getting things moving can be really good the other great thing though about capsaicin is it does have anti-viral properties it also has levels of vitamin c which we know vitamin c is one of those vitamins that can really help us fight off viruses and colds and help with the immune system it also has antimicrobial properties but where capsaicin and hot peppers hence the name fire cider like we're not calling this fire cider for no reason there are some heat properties in here but capsaicin especially and peppers can be really really great when you are beginning to come down with a cold but especially a cold where you have congestion or where it feels like that wetness case in point before i ever started using herbs medicinally and be careful because you don't want to get it on your fingers and then touch your eye or any other areas of the body that would be sensitive to heat i'm actually going to grab a pair of gloves before i start chopping these up if you can't find your gloves plastic sandwich bags are a great alternative so we are just going to remove the tops here and because i really want as much of the heat in here as possible i'm going to go ahead and leave the seeds in as well and then we're just going to get these diced up but the first time i discovered the power of capsaicin as i was telling you i was just beginning to come down with a cold so you know when you just start to feel like a little bit of a sniffle and you're just starting to get a little bit nasally well that's what was happening i was starting to sneeze all that stuff and i went over to our neighbors to grab something or to drop something off at their house and they were in the middle of just getting dinner on the table and my neighbor is a phenomenal cook and she had a big pot it was in the end of summer she had a big pot of home grown and cooked green beans which is one of my favorite vegetables and so she had a big pot sitting a big dish of it sitting there on the table and she's like oh you know have some so so i dished up my green beans and i went to take a bite now i thought i was biting into a green bean that was a little bit bright thinking like oh it was one that just hadn't got cooked all the way it was the same size as a green bean she had forgot to tell me that she put one extremely hot pepper that was small and green i don't even know what kind it was it was a very very hot pepper it was not a jalapeno it was harder than a jalapeno in there to flavor the entire batch and she forgot to remove it and she got to tell me it was in there and so that was the one that i the whole thing i just like started chewing oh my gosh my eyes started watering i don't even know if i could breathe for a couple of seconds like i think my whole body was just like shutting down from the heat and i started gasping and she knew immediately what had happened she was like oh you got the pepper and i'm like so she's running in the fridge and getting me a big glass of milk uh which of course i downed and then was able to finally breathe and talk again after a couple of minutes but i tell you what that cleaned out my sinuses like no other and whatever cold i was trying to get it could not survive so i never did come down fully with the cold it left right then and there and from there on out i always learned if i was at her house to ask if she put a pepper in anything and i didn't know about it but i really got to witness the power of capsaicin and peppers especially when you are having a cold that has any type of sinus issues or congestion it was amazing it worked very very well was very effective so that on itself was really effective but when you get to combine that with all of these other herbs and into the power of fire cider this is truly a powerhouse medicine so now we're going to add this to our delightful jar of goodies now we have one last ingredient at this phase of the game with fire cider and that is raw apple cider vinegar now i happen to have homemade raw apple cider vinegar you can obviously purchase raw apple cider vinegar from the store you just want to make sure that it is raw and has the mother in it which is what you see this little floating stuff in there that is the mother this is a jar of homemade apple cider vinegar that i made two years ago and we are going to pour this over the top and completely infuse this with vinegar all right that's just a little bit of the mother but that's actually going to help hold the solids down beneath the surface of the liquid so we're gonna let this sit for two to four weeks with the solids in there completely submerged by the vinegar and that is key because if there's any bits of these little solid pieces that are sticking up above the surface of the vinegar they will mold so we want to make sure that they're completely submerged an easy way to do that is to just use a glass fermenting weight so we're just going to put this right in there that will help hold all of my solids beneath the surface except for that little tiny piece of jalapeno that wanted to sneak out there there we go and then i'm going to cover this just because fruit flies love the smell of vinegar and i definitely do not want any fruit flies into my fire cider so i'm going to put this lid on i'm not using metal because if you can shake this or stir it up once or twice a day that's just going to help release release juices and further infuse it into this so i'm just going to set this on in the cupboard so it's not in direct sunlight but where i'm going to see it and remember to shake that daily as much as possible if you don't forget if you forget to shake it and spend a couple days like don't worry about it nothing is right after two to four weeks you need to strain out the solids don't let it be go beyond four weeks because even though vinegar is a great preservative you've got a lot of solid material in here and they can begin to break down and go bad so we want to make sure that we are straining this out and reserving the infused apple cider vinegar which is then going to be our fire cider after four weeks then it will sit on the shelf it's completely shelf stable this is the last batch that i have from last year so i just have a little bit left here that you can see and of course this is all it is a little bit cloudy because this does have the mother still in there and a little bit of the stuff so you just want to shake this up right before use and fire cider as i said is excellent when you first start to come down with a cold and it's going to help stimulate the immune system but where it really shines is if you're getting a cold that deals with congestion or where it feels really wet and it's that really wet cough so it's great for that in fact my husband that tends to be when he gets a cold where it tends to settle is in his chest and in his sinuses and i don't know about you like i feel like we all have these people in our life where he's a little bit more skeptic of trying natural remedies until he tries it and then he's like oh man like that really works but he remains a skeptic until like it is completely proved to him so the first time i make this up he's like what is this stuff you have now and i'm like it's really good like just try it and so i don't want to say i'm waiting for him to get sick because that sounds horrible but there's a small part of me that is like oh i can't wait for him to try this one like he's going to be converted i know it and so when we first made fire cider and he started to come down with a cold and one where it was settling in his sinuses and and in his chest and stuff and so i'm like here try this and he was like whoo that is potent but then he was like wow that really was effective and really worked and so now he just immediately asked like where's the firesider as soon as he's starting to come down with something then he'll take it to work with him to have it with him throughout the day so i like to say that i have i have converted him especially with the fire cider if you want to learn more about using herbs medicinally and natural remedies as well as contraindications we will have that in the printable version of this that you can get on the blog post but make sure that you are on the wait list for my full herb course so you can get access to all of the goodies as well as the lowest price ever for the full course when it goes live on october 20th

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 72,165

Rating: 4.9755378 out of 5

Keywords: fire cider, how to make fire cider, fire cider recipe, master tonic, how to boost your immune system, herbal remedies, holistic health, apple cider vinegar, cold remedy, natural remedies, herbal medicine, herbal remedies for colds and coughs, herbal remedies for sore throat, herbal remedies for fever, natural remedies for cough, natural remedies for sore throat, herbal medicine for cough, herbal medicine recipes, herbal medicine course

Id: EXt0dn5rmF8

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 06 2021