Time-Saving Tips For Making Homemade Flaxseed Gel

Time-Saving Tips For Making Homemade Flaxseed (Linseed) Gel

Sometimes making homemade hair gel can feel like an inconvenient chore when you have a dozen other things competing for your attention. But few products are as effective in so many types of hair and good for hair at the same time as homemade hair gels. Need I even mention that homemade flaxseed gel is wonderfully inexpensive? So I'll share some of my tips to help prevent your flaxseed gel making plans from falling through. Need a recipe? Here's my basic recipe.

Preparing Ahead of Time: Get your tools and ingredients ready for when you have time to do the actual "cooking" so you don't have to do the preparation and cooking at the same time. You can do these a day or two in advance.

• Clean and sterilize bottles, funnels, utensils and put them someplace clean, protected (keep out dust and insects) and out of the way
• Assemble all your ingredients in one place.

Cooking and clean-up tips:

• Stir during heating so seeds don't stick to the pan.
• Simmer until thin threads (not thick or gloppy strings) hang from your stirring fork/spoon (to avoid unstrainable gel).
• Invest in a large mesh strainer so you can strain all or most of your gel at once.
• Put the pan you boiled the seeds and water in, into water immediately! Swish the water around and get the gel off the sides and bottom of the pan quickly. If it cools or dries on the pan it takes much longer to clean.
• Put all stirring utensils into water quickly too (when you're done using them) and rub the gel from their surfaces.
• Strain the gel into a glass measuring cup with a wide mouth (i.e. Pyrex) so you know the yield of gel and can adjust any add-ins accordingly.

Batch size tips: Why make just one batch when you can make less work for yourself by simply making more?

• Make a large batch of gel and freeze half. Plain flax gel freezes very well. Many ingredients are okay to freeze. If you're not sure about an ingredient, try freezing just a little as a test and see how it looks and feels when completely thawed.
• To be especially careful (and avoid any thawing disasters), freeze plain, strained gel with no additional ingredients and add those when it has thawed. You've still saved a lot of steps!