Why Infuse?

When it comes to cooking, there are endless ways to add flavor. You can use herbs, spices, and marinades to dress up your dishes, but have you ever tried infusing? Infused foods are tasty and healthy, and they’re a great way to add flavor without using processed ingredients. This simple, yet effective process of infusing herbs and botanicals into oils, butter, or other carriers, elevates the essence of whatever you desire to create with them! Infusion is actually the back-of-house restaurant secret behind some of the best dishes money can buy! Think about the difference between a cake mix made with plain canola oil compared to the same mix made with anise infused almond oil… a profound difference in flavor and the distinction is the infusion.

Infusing also goes beyond its uses in the kitchen. From food to beverages, beauty, and home care products, home infusing allows you to control the ingredients that you are consuming and using.

What is Oil Infusion?

Oil infusion involves the process of adding any herb or botanical to a carrier oil, butter or fat of your choosing. This process infuses the goodness of the ingredients into the oil, making it a healthier choice for cooking, consumption or topical use. Plus, it's a great way to add flavor to your food and scent to your homecare creations, not to mention the health benefits provided by the botanical properties of the infusion. With just a few simple ingredients you can create an extensive range of creations that will impress even the most discerning palates! 

The Benefits of Home Infusions

There are a great number of benefits and reasons to begin your journey into the world of home infusions! While everyone will have their own motivations for venturing into this time-honored craft, the chances of discovering all new uses, flavors, scents, and applications for what you’ve created are unbelievably high. In fact, the sky is the limit!

Health Benefits

Control What You Consume

One of the most desired benefits of home infusion is the ability to control the ingredients of the products you consume and use on a daily basis. From food, to skincare, and other medicinal tinctures or topicals, alleviating your products of the additives that exist in the things most available to us is implausible. Usually, premade infusions unfortunately use extraction techniques and add-ons that result in unwanted additives. By hand selecting the ingredients for your infusion and infusing at home, you can ensure that only the most wholesome ingredients make their way into your body. The process of infusing is simple, and unmatched in the power it returns of controlling the products that can help or hinder your health through their consumption.

It goes without saying that the infusing provides the true richness of plant botanicals, adding a deeper flavor profile to any base. Infuse the subtle or complex flavors of spices, herbs, florals and more with a simple pairing. Indulge in a diverse pool of flavors, hand-crafted by you and for you! Additionally, home infusion enables you the opportunity to tailor any creation to your own personal tastes, while maintaining the flexibility to edit any infused delicacy thereafter!

Cost Saving

With home infusion, you save money and time spent shopping. The cost of getting started with home infusion is nothing compared to the cost of those available for purchase, let alone the quality of the preserved and packaged goods available on store shelves. You can pay less to get more out of infusion and spare yourself of unwanted additives along the way.

The Joys of Homemaking

Few things are as satisfying as bringing your own unique ideas to life, especially in the kitchen or home. Whether it’s a salad dressing, marinade, elevated cookie recipe, infused bath or skincare product, creating something special feeds the soul and spirit just as much as it may fulfill the needs of your stomach or health overall! For personal use, to share with loved ones, or to serve the needs of your personal brand or business, home infusion spreads love to all those it touches.

What Can You Infuse?

Infusing allows you to incorporate the flavors of your choice into whatever carrier you are looking to work with! 

Your base ingredient will pull the botanicals, unique flavors, and healthful attributes, into your carrier of choice, creating an incorporated infusion that meets your desired needs. 

Infusion ingredients can stretch beyond your wildest limits! Allow us to lay out some of the most sought-after botanicals enthusiasts enjoy playing with.

Herbs: All of the leafy greens we love! From basil, tarragon, thyme, sage, chives, mint, bay leaves, cilantro, parsley, and beyond, garden herbs are a favorite for infusions. Their unique tastes and ability for pairing offer plenty of options for cooking and consuming.

Spices: Most often in the form of seeds, but sometimes roots or bark, spices make a statement when combined with oils and fats. Some favorites include cumin, turmeric, anise, pepper, ginger, wasabi, and cinnamon.

Coffee, Espresso and Cacao: This beautiful bean trio has a whole complementary array of benefits, both alone or as a flavor consortium. Heartily useful in both savory and sweet creations, this infusion is any coffee lover’s dream!

Fruits: The picturesque delicacy of a fruit-infused coconut treat! There are plenty of options to explore in the realm of fruit infusions. Whether you lean toward infusing the peels for the highly concentrated fruit botanical, or the tart, juicy fruit itself, the tender taste of fresh fruit explodes through the carrier of its pairing.

With heat, time and fluid motion, the botanicals from the plant, otherwise known as the base ingredient, will loosen and adhere to its carrier of pairing. A carrier, is the other key ingredient that allows for the infusion process. It is a fat-based substance that binds with the botanicals, creating an incorporated infusion. There are several carriers that as an infusiast, you have to choose from and experiment with. Allow us to explore some with you today!

Coconut Oil and MCT Oil: These are popular options, and longingly selected for their versatility for use in both recipes and topicals. 

Butter: The golden goodness of carriers that serves to create rich, creamy infusions for culinary creations of all kinds! 

Ghee: As a clarified butter, ghee is known for its health properties, and is frequently used for healing practices in Ayurvedic medicine, such as for treating burns, and rashes and helping to hydrate dry skin and hair. It is a definite desire for the healthy homemaker interested in creating their own skin and beauty products!

Vegetable Glycerine: Also known as glycerine or glycerol, this carrier is derived from soy, coconut, or palm oils. It is commonly called upon as an agent for use in infused soaps, lotions, balms, and salves. 

Honey: A fan favorite for infusions, home-infused lavender or hibiscus honey is sure to elevate whatever you choose to pour it over! Additionally, the health properties of using locally sourced honey are sure to provide the immunity support your body needs through changing seasons.

What Can You Make With Infusions?

When it comes to infusing, the sky is the limit!  Infused oils, butters and honeys can be incorporated into virtually any of the recipes or goods on your grocery list. We’ve put together a short list of just some of the creations you can create with infusions. 

Baked Goods: All of your favorite home-baked recipes from bread to brownies can get a lift. By infusing at home, flower-infused cookies, brownies, and gummies can be dosed to meet your own personal needs. Not only does it save a trip to the local shop, but you can be sure your edibles deliver the exact results you are looking for. 

Dressings & Marinades: An herbal infusion can truly elevate any dressing or marinade you create, hear or read up on. They are quick to whip up and easy to adjust as you go.

Salves: Manage your pain with homemade soothing salves. Infusing enables you to design your own homeopathic remedies for tailored relief and restoration. Every base serves a different, unique purpose, opening up the realm of relieving salves for you to experiment and explore!

Alcohol-Free Tinctures. Tinctures are concentrated doses of medicinal botanicals, infused into glycerin or MCT oil. Hemp tinctures are also commonly referred to as golden or green dragon tinctures. Turned to for insomnia, pain, nausea, and muscle relief, these concentrated doses of medicinal botanicals can provide life-changing benefits. 

The opportunity to create infused eats, treats and home goods extend far beyond those laid out here. From creams to homemade essential oils, candles, and more, infusing is a process that can be applied to all areas of your life, and tailored to your own individual interests and needs.

How Do I Get Started Infusing?

Over time, people have developed numerous ways to infuse botanicals into carriers. This process has been tailored for use with french presses, crock pots, blenders, and double boilers, all followed by straining through cheesecloth. Though these inventions have served us many times for various daily needs… when it comes to infusing, finding consistent results can be a deep, dark challenge. 

In order to create a proper infusion, temperature control is crucial – and as such, this is one of the main challenges associated with home infusion. The processes require precise practices, invested time and attention, and most often deliver messy and inconsistent results.  

Now, before we turn you off to infusing for good, we are eager to introduce you to the method that eliminates all of the flaws of the other processes mentioned above. 

Oil Infusion Machines Are The WAY TO GO!

You may or may not have heard, but there is a machine designed to streamline this process so that curating your own personalized botanical oils is simple, mess-free and essentially, hands off. 

With this in mind, not all home infusion machines are created equal. Many of those on the market are repurposed soy milk-makers that were ultimately designed for, well, making just that, soy milk. The problem here is that when it comes to infusing an oil or butter, the machine tears up the plants containing the very botanicals you're trying to coax the best qualities from. 

One of the large problems with these forms of milk-making machines is that in tearing and whipping up the plant matter, a release of chlorophyll takes place, which consequentially introduces elements of oxidation. This combination could create a color, or taste that is quite undesirable, overall dismantling the vision for a fantastic infusion. 

Outside of aeration, the temperature is a vital factor that can destroy an infusion if not properly controlled. These elements are critical to creating dreamy, elevated infusions. This is why choosing a machine that is designed to eliminate these potential problems can be game-changing!

The Ultimate Solution 

In an effort to create a line of professional-level home infusers for the kitchen hobbyist, the fine folks at LĒVO have been hard at work. Through a number of R&D iterations they’ve been able to take controlled home infusing to a whole new level, and the reviews from around the world are swift to support this claim. With three, carefully designed machines, LĒVO presents a fine-tuned method to allow you to step into the world of home infusions risk-free!

First in line, the LĒVO II, which was the world’s first patented oil infuser. First designed for the flower forward infusiast, the LĒVO II is the perfect kitchen side-kick for culinary enthusiasts looking to create their own personal batches of artisanal infusions. With three unique functionalities, this machine dries, activates and infuses herbs of all kinds. Herbs freshly picked from your garden are set to dry, and then followed by an activate (or decarb) setting, in preparation for the final infusion process. It is also programmable when it comes to setting the critical time and temperature for your infusion at hand. The LEVO ll home-infusing machine is great for small kitchen batches of artisanal infusions.

Additionally, LĒVO developed the LĒVO C, designed as a large batch infusion solution. This machine can pump out 1-liter batches for high-frequency users and small botanical business owners. If you’re looking to scale, LĒVO can help you get there.

Most recently, LĒVO released the LĒVO Lux. This top-shelf machine is geared with an elevated Dry function, providing a seamless process for home-gardeners, homesteaders, and restauranteurs looking to create golden infusions from freshly picked garden herbs. 

An additional benefit to all three machines – all of the removable components are completely dishwasher safe, so the cleaning process is equally as easy and hands-free as the infusion process itself. At the simple click of a button, give your garden herbs or budding botanicals a whole new purpose. Set and forget is our motto, providing a simple, clean, efficient, and refined process to home infusion. Allow us to take the pressure off your need to learn a complex home-infusion process, and enjoy the process of a dispensed infusion that exceeds your expectations.

Visit levooil.com  and explore the entire line of home infusion products. You’ll also find hundreds of recipes and guides to support your journey, along with our team that is invested in seeing your infusion dreams come to life! We are here to support you and your journey to home infusion and welcome all of your questions, thoughts, and creation! Our only question for you is, what are you infusing first?! 

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