It takes hundreds of pounds (if not thousands) to create orange essential oil, as with other essential oil. The best you can do is infuse a little scent into whatever you're cooking or if you have a vinegar solution. It's not going to be essential oil though.

 

You can infuse the peel in a light carrier oil and use in soaps or body oils.
But like the other mama said, it won't be an essential oil....
It literally takes a ton of an herb, (ie. chamomile) to make an ounce of oil.
Infused oils are great though!

 

I thought I saw an essential oil distiller on Edmund Scientific's site a couple of years ago, but I have no idea how much it takes to make a reasonable amount. I saw it and thought it looked like a fun project to see how EO's are made, but I didn't have the money to get it. It might be a place to start.

BTW, go smell the tree for me. It sounds wonderful!

 

Here's a snippet from an article for perspective:

Essential oils are produced using several techniques. Distillation uses water and steam to remove the oils from dried or fresh plants, and the expression method uses machines to squeeze the oil out of plants. Other techniques may use alcohol or solvents to remove essential oils from plant materials.

Essential oils are extremely concentrated. It would take roughly thirty cups of herbal tea to equal the concentration of plant essence in one drop of essential oil. Some essential oils made from rose plants require 4,000 pounds of rose petals to make one pound of essential oil, and are thus very expensive. Lavender is one of the easiest essential oils to produce, because it only takes one hundred pounds of plant material to produce one pound of essential oil.

Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/essential-oil

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spastica Essential oils are extremely concentrated. It would take roughly thirty cups of herbal tea to equal the concentration of plant essence in one drop of essential oil. Some essential oils made from rose plants require 4,000 pounds of rose petals to make one pound of essential oil, and are thus very expensive. Lavender is one of the easiest essential oils to produce, because it only takes one hundred pounds of plant material to produce one pound of essential oil. Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/essential-oil

Holy piles of plants batman!

The tree does smell so wonderful! I was so excited when we bought this house. The first year the tree didn't do so well (only got about 6 tangerines) as it had a major aphid problem. But I set a bunch of ladybugs loose on the tree and they took care of the aphids for me. The tree was happy about this apparently. We had so many tangerines, the branches were hitting the ground because they were so heavy. We've been making a lot of tangerine juice!

I think I am going to try doing some infusions. I did some reading on the web and found some information on doing either oil or apple cider vinegar. I might try some of each.

 

I think if you grate the peels, the zest will work nicely. I think the inner rind tends to mold over easily. Alternatively, you can dry them out (oven heated or lay them out in the sun) and use them as potpouri or put the dried bits in your infusions (it will soak up the liquids you put it in a lot faster and you won't have water spoilage or rot).

 

you can do alot with the rinds, you can make candies fruit rinds, sticky job, but I did this to add to my holiday cookie platter one year.
You can make and keep a lot of zest, layer dried zest alternatively in a jar of sugar, then use for cookies, cakes, any baking.(I do this alot with vanilla seed pods)
it's also great for popouri
and during the holidays we cut eclipical shapes with the rind, stick a kabob stick in the middle(before it's dried out) and use these with strung decoration, string the peal with dried apple slices, nuts, cinnamon sticks, for a fragrance decoration.

 

The way to get EO out of citrus is to express the peels. If you peel a tangerine and take a segment of peel and bend it tward the colored side, it will release so oil. You will probably be able to smell it and it will be all over your fingers. But as others have posted, it would take about a million tangerines to get a couple of actual drops of EO. HTH.

 

The infused oils work great, and are probably your best bet. You just peel off the zest and put it in a glass container, cover it with a carrier oil (safflower usually works well and is fairly cheap and stable) and then just stick it in a cool dry place. I frequently don't bother to pull the zest back out of the oil if I did a good job keeping the white pith off of it.

Mmmm... I'm thinking of tangerine flavored homemade lip balm.... so cool about having that tree!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by mousemadeslings Mmmm... I'm thinking of tangerine flavored homemade lip balm.... so cool about having that tree!

Hmmm. I was thinking more of culinary applications than this, but I love this idea. Do you have any recipes? I am planning to make all homemade gifts for next year, and this would be really neat to add to the list.

 

I'd be really careful with citrus oils in a lip balm. I know a lot of people get blown up lips from acidic stuff on their lips...I'm not allergic to oranges or citrus fruit but any acidic fruit juice (any fruit other than banana, which isn't really acidic) that touches my lips always irritates it. I know some other people who have the same problem. I have to cut up my fruit before eating it

 

That's a drag. I wanted some tangerine lip balm, too!

 

You can try it for yourself - I was just suggesting that if you gave them out as gifts, you'd check with the person first. On the plus side, it's a natural way to get 'bee-stung' pouty lips