How Argan Oil is Made

http://www.vizeribeauty.com/argan The extraction of Argan oil is a multi-step procedure that starts with the collection of the olive-sized fruit after it has fallen from the tree, or it might be knocked off. Harvesting occurs between May and August. Then the fruit is dried in the sun for about a week if it is sunny, longer if not. After that, the fleshy rind of fruit is removed and is typically used as food for local goats.

Inside the fleshy part of the fruit is an incredibly hard-shelled pit that needs to be broken with stones to remove the kernels inside. Attempts have been made to mechanize this, but since each pit can have between one and three kernels, no reliable method has been found for this procedure. Trained Moroccan ladies know how to appropriately manage splitting the pit since this ability has been passed from generation to generation. The kernels inside the pit are what contains the oil.

The kernels are crushed and ground into a thick paste. There are 2 approaches of producing the paste. One is the traditional stone hand mill and a number of hours of hand kneading the paste to extract the oil. The other is utilizing more recent mechanical equipment, which produces more oil than the hand procedure. At this point the procedure is different and relies on the method selected.