Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 422 1 year and 2 season

In advance, all the rapeseed had been cleaned up. In order to save rapeseed, Hualei weighed 50 kilograms of rapeseed and began to experiment with oil extraction.

Put the rapeseed in an iron pan and fry it. The main purpose of frying rapeseed is to remove excess water from the rapeseed. Don’t think that this procedure is simple. In fact, frying rapeseed is a very important procedure, which is directly related to the oil yield of rapeseed.

If the cooking time is not high enough, the rapeseed will be undercooked and the oil yield will be low. If the cooking time is too long and the rapeseed is overcooked, the oil will also be consumed. Therefore, this step is very important and critical.

Fortunately, the people working in the oil press are all experienced. Although they have never used rapeseed to press oil, they know that when they use beans to press oil, they fry the beans in the same way. So while they are frying, they carefully keep an eye on the rapeseed in the pot.

After the rapeseed is fried, use a stone mill to grind it into powder, and then continue to grind it into powder in the grinding trough. It is best to grind the rapeseed into a sticky texture like glutinous rice cake.

After the rapeseed is ground, it needs to be steamed in a wooden steamer, just like steaming rice, for a while until it is almost done when it has some oily aroma. The next step is to wrap it in oil cakes. This step is the same as squeezing oil from beans.

Put clean straw on a round bamboo hoop, pour the crushed rapeseed powder into a small bottomless wooden basin on the hoop, flatten and compact it with your hands, cover it with straw and compact it again.

The requirement of the cake-wrapping process is that the speed must be fast, otherwise the rapeseed will not be able to be squeezed out of oil if it cools down. The next step is the most important step for rapeseed, which is to start squeezing oil.

The oil press cart made of buds is also ready. Put the wrapped oil cake into the press chamber, stuff it into the wooden press beam, and then insert the wooden plug and wedge.

Find a few strong people to take turns using hammers to hit the wedges again and again to squeeze the oil cakes. After a wedge is knocked in, another wedge is inserted, and the oil cakes placed aside are squeezed step by step.

After two cups of tea, the bright yellow and mellow rapeseed oil began to be squeezed out from the oil cake drop by drop, flowing along the grooves into the wooden barrel placed in advance under the press.

Seeing that the oil really came out, Emperor Shengwu had a smile on his face.

Rapeseed is similar to beans. After a series of processes including frying, stone grinding, steaming, wrapping, pressing and squeezing, rapeseed oil is finally squeezed out.

When the rapeseed cake in the press chamber finally stopped dripping oil, the wooden barrel below was already half full of rapeseed oil.

However, the rapeseed oil nowadays is still a bit turbid. You need to skim off the foam from the pressed rapeseed oil and filter it with clean white gauze before you can eat it.

After filtering the rapeseed oil, a worker has already skillfully weighed the wooden barrel. Finally, after removing the weight of the wooden barrel, 50 kilograms of rapeseed oil can produce about 17 kilograms of rapeseed oil, which is almost half more than soybean oil.

Emperor Shengwu was overjoyed. This meant that rapeseed could not only be used to extract oil, but the oil yield was much higher than the current soybean oil.

In order to try the taste of rapeseed oil, Emperor Shengwu brought out two chefs from the imperial kitchen when he went out incognito, and even brought out some of the various ingredients.

At this time, two chefs were asked to fry, stir-fry and deep-fry in the oil press kitchen as quickly as possible. Soon, several dishes fried with rapeseed were served with a greasy look.

Emperor Shengwu picked up the chopsticks, picked up a piece of vegetable, put it into his mouth and chewed it carefully. It was indeed fragrant and delicious. The rapeseed oil did not have the bean smell and tasted better than cooking with soybean oil.

Emperor Shengwu tried several other dishes and they all tasted very good. After a cup of tea, Emperor Shengwu put down his chopsticks with satisfaction.

Since this rapeseed can really be used to produce oil, Emperor Shengwu immediately issued an oral order that all the rapeseed purchased from Hualei should be planted in government fields in spring.

Of course, Eunuch Fu, who was beside Emperor Shengwu, immediately gave Hualei five thousand taels of silver notes as money for rapeseed seeds. Hualei politely declined a few times, but accepted it without any psychological pressure.

Of course, Emperor Shengwu was in a very good mood and was not stingy. Although there were only 17 catties of rapeseed oil, he generously gave Hualei 5 catties to satisfy her craving. The accompanying Marquis Pei also got 5 catties of rapeseed oil, which was very rare. The rest were taken to the imperial kitchen, but it was estimated that the concubines in the harem would not be able to eat this rapeseed oil this time.

Hua Lei received the silver note, and Emperor Sheng Wu's tasks were also assigned to her. Of course, the tasks were assigned to the Ministry of Agriculture, and Hua Lei's next task was to sow the rapeseeds.

This is not difficult. Hualei has experience. Even officials from the Ministry of Agriculture who have never grown rapeseed will basically be able to do it. After all, it is similar to growing other green leafy vegetables. If that doesn't work, just ask the people in the north.

Originally, Emperor Shengwu wanted to send shadow guards to the north to purchase rapeseed, but at the suggestion of Marquis Pei and Hua Lei, he directly issued an oral order to several prefectures in the north, asking the prefects of the north to strongly encourage local people to grow rapeseed. At that time, rapeseed would be purchased at a high price and some land taxes would be exempted.

Sure enough, once Emperor Shengwu's oral order was issued, the officials below immediately started to work together, and soon, the fields planted with rapeseed in the north increased in large numbers in the spring.

In the second half of the year, we worked hard to sow a batch of rapeseed in the fall, thus achieving two seasons of rapeseed cultivation a year.

This is much simpler than sending shadow guards to collect and purchase rapeseed and then bring it back to the capital to plant it. The results are also more obvious. After all, the power of the people is great, and Emperor Shengwu is even happier.

By the second half of the second year, the court was able to use rapeseed to press oil and send it to the military camps in Mobei and Xijiang. Of course, when the rapeseed buds matured, they were also bought back by the court at a certain price. Oil was still a precious commodity and was centrally allocated by the court and could not be resold privately.

Hualei's dream of getting rich from rapeseed was shattered again. Fortunately, Emperor Shengwu gave her a lot of silver notes, which was a kind of consolation, and she finally got to eat the rapeseed oil she had always dreamed of, which was more fragrant than soybean oil.

Moreover, Hualei also received a special permission from Emperor Shengwu, and Hualei could take home the rapeseed cakes made from her own rapeseed for free. This more or less comforted Hualei's restless heart.

You know, rapeseed cake has very strong cleansing and bactericidal abilities. It can be used to make shampoo for washing hair, and the effect is very good.

Moreover, rapeseed cake is the best fertilizer for tea trees.