Making Shea Butter

Last week I got to help my host family make shea-butter. The experience was…long! and awesome! It’s too bad you can’t share scents with people over the internet because the smell was ridiculously delicious.

DAY 1
Step 1: Buy de-shelled shea nuts that from the market.


Step 2: Wash said shea nuts


Step 3: Wait for the sun to move so that you can work and only be dripping beads of sweat rather than baseballs of sweat.
Step 4: Watch grandma sit down and take a rock and start pounding one shea nut at a time. Ask if you can help and wait for the laughter to die down. “Do you think you’re able?” My options are to be amused but slightly insulted (I know I can’t carry 50 pounds of water on my head, but how weak do you think I am?!?) and watch her pound or take up the challenge and show them what Canadians are made of (thank me later). I am excited to work on this because I will be spending time with Grandma. Grandma doesn’t speak English and I see this as a chance to bond with her. So I pick up a rock and hit the first nut. The rock comes back up and I look at the nut – it looks the same. I have to use more force. I try again and examine a squished nut. One down, a big bucket full of nuts left. Grandma and I, and occasionally Amelia and Shaman (the two four year olds) continue pounding the nuts until we are interrupted/saved (depending on your point of view) by a rain storm.


When we are about half way done, Grandma asks to see my hands, touches them and laughs non-stop. “Hey! What’s so funny?! Let me see yours!” I exclaim. She shows me her hand and I start to laugh too. No wonder it doesn’t hurt when they pick up coals or put their hands into boiling water – they’ve got some seriously awesome thick skin. When the rain lets down we continue pounding shea nuts until dinner. After a short break for dinner I want to go to bed but I am determined to show them how stubborn I am.


We continue working in the dark. We finish and Grandma smiles her million dollar smile, “toma, toma” (work, work) and I respond “nam-pah”. Despite sitting on the ground pounding nuts for an entire day I am so happy because the Grandma and I are friends now!



DAY 2
Step 5: Fry the pounded shea nuts in a big pot so that they are ready to bring to the grinding mill. They use the word fry but no oil is used, you basically just heat them up and stir a lot.


Step 6: Go to the grinding mill and bring back what looks and smells like a delicious pot of chocolate frosting. I want to eat it. I act out eating it to see if we can, but am told no, it doesn’t taste good. I guess it’s like when I open a bottle of vanilla at home.


DAY 3
Step 7: Invite Grandma’s friends over so that they can help be human electric mixers. Uhh, I realize this is the wrong word choice. Basically they are about to stir like maniacs for an insanely long time.
Step 8: Use your hands to mix the frosting-like shea nut mixture. While doing this you are breaking up any clumps that you see and making it smooth. This is awesome – it’s like playing with your food! We mix and kneed while hot water is being added.

At some point I stop helping because this stage takes talent. As water is added, the material changes in colour and texture. It’s quite incredible to watch. The women keep mixing and adding water. Occasionally the water is separated from the solids. Each time the solids look more and more grey in colour and more and more oily looking. After several hours of adding water, stiring, and separating material, they are left with something that looks a bit like quicksand and smells like a mild chocolate.


Step 9: Sit infront of a fire (fires are hot) on a hot day in a structure that retains heat and stir a pot of quicksand.

Slowly the quicksand melts into a brown liquid and it starts to boil and bubble. We stir and sit and wait for about 2 hours and slowly white bubbles start to appear.

Eventually the women know it is done and scoop off the foam that has formed. The liquid below is “shea butter”. At the very bottom of the pot are the dregs. Both the dregs and the foam are discarded of and the oil is sifted and left to harden.

The shea butter before it hardens:


The shea butter after it hardens:


What an experience! Shea butter lasts for up to a year and the family will use it in cooking. I just had a bowl of rice for dinner that had shea butter in it. You can buy balls of shea butter in the market for about 10 cents. Considering the cost of the shea nuts and the cost of bring them to the grinding mill, there is literally no cost for the labour.