Is Your Stevia Real?
Today I want to expand a little on a post I did 6 months ago. In this video, featured below, I show you how to make your own pure stevia and liquid stevia. Making and growing your own stevia is very simple. You can save a lot of money by making your own stevia and take comfort in knowing that this is the “real” thing and not the fake stevia that is all over our markets today!
Since stevia has taken off in the health food markets, a lot of fake and un pure stevia has shown up on the shelves. A clear example would be Truvia made by the Coca Cola Company. It is made to taste like sugar and look like sugar to sell like sugar.
Stevia is not supposed to taste like sugar and a true stevia is actually green, not white. Stevia has a very sweet taste, yes, but if you use too much it can quickly become bitter.
Does Your Stevia Have Added “Hidden” Sugar?
A lot of stevia for sale today has added ingredients and hidden sugars added. Remember “ose” on the end of a word is usually another form of sugar. One of these ingredients that you see often in this so called pure stevia is dextrose! Stay away from this, it is sugar and there is nothing pure about it.
When purchasing stevia, make sure the ingredients are OLNY pure stevia (no artificial colors, flavors or added preservatives) then you would probably be okay to consume this.
How To Make Your Own Pure Stevia & Liquid Stevia
If you are wanting to make sure your stevia is pure, then try making it yourself. Growing stevia is super easy. You can pick up a stevia plant at your local nursery and I have also seen them at home improvement stores in their garden centers. Stevia plants have become very easy to find these days.
Stevia can be grown in pots, in landscapes, and in gardens. You can even grow stevia indoors. It requires very little maintenance. It can be harvested all summer long but is sweetest in the fall when the temperatures become cooler.
When your stevia is ready to harvest (you can view my stevia that is ready for harvest in the video below) then follow these simple steps to make your own pure stevia and liquid stevia.
- Harvest your stevia plant by cutting off the branches at the base of the plant.
- Wash the branches/leaves in clean filter water.
- Pick leaves off stevia plant, discard the stems, and dry the leaves for 12 hours in the sun.
- Once your leaves are dry, grind them in a food processor or coffee grinder to make pure stevia. I find that a coffee grinder makes for the finest powder and works very nicely.
- Note ~ homegrown stevia powder is not as sweet as store bought stevia (300 times sweeter than sugar). To cook with home grown stevia simply replace every 1 cup of sugar with 3-4 teaspoons of homegrown stevia.
- To make liquid stevia, dissolve 1/4 cup pure homegrown stevia powder with 1 cup hot filtered water. Stir and leave out at room temperature for 24 hours. After 24 hours strain the stevia out of the liquid and store the liquid stevia in the refrigerator.
That is it. It tastes amazing and you will never buy store bought stevia again. One plant usually supplies enough stevia to last me a year. Remember, a little goes a long way!! 🙂 So head on out and get yourself a stevia plant and try this for yourself. You won’t be disappointed!
How To Make Your Own Pure Stevia & Liquid Stevia ~ Part 2
Print Recipe
Pin RecipeIngredients
- Leaves from a stevia plant
- 1/4 cup pure homegrown stevia
- 1 cup hot filtered water
Instructions
- Harvest your stevia plant by cutting off the branches at the base of the plant.
- Wash the branches/leaves in clean filter water.
- Pick leaves off stevia plant, discard the stems, and dry the leaves for 12 hours in the sun.
- Once your leaves are dry, grind them in a food processor or coffee grinder to make pure stevia. I find that a coffee grinder makes for the finest powder and works very nicely.
- Note ~ homegrown stevia powder is not as sweet as store bought stevia (300 times sweeter than sugar). To cook with home grown stevia simply replace every 1 cup of sugar with 3-4 teaspoons of homegrown stevia.
- To make liquid stevia, dissolve 1/4 cup pure homegrown stevia powder with 1 cup hot filtered water. Stir and leave out at room temperature for 24 hours. After 24 hours strain the stevia out of the liquid and store the liquid stevia in the refrigerator.
Share Your Thoughts
Have you grown your own stevia?
What are some of your favorite ways to use stevia?
Very cool, looks easy!
I tasted the leaves of Stevia plant and they were very sweet and tasty. However, I bought the powder form and I found it not to be sweet at all. I bought the ground stevia to put in my coffee not knowing that it does not disolve. Help I don’t know what to do with the ground stevia I bought. Does the grounding process take the sweetness away? Too much heat in the grinding process maybe?
Hey, just came across this. I’d experiment. Try and use the powder to make the liquid. If it’s no good, then you know. If you don’t like the powder you probably won’t use it so nothing lost right. I recently bought 2 stevia plants from a plant fair at LSU on leap day and will be making my own soon.
Try putting the stevia in your coffee filter as you brew the coffee?
Thanks, going to buy a plant today!!
I know this is an old post, however harvesting my scrawny stevia plants is new for me! The cost of stevia alone caused me to purchase the two last plants available at the garden centre. Searching for how to harvest them brought me here. Wonderfully informative article, Thank you. Does anyone have any advice on how to thicken up my indoor plants? They don’t look anywhere as healthy as Halle’s. I am thinking about rooting a stem and starting over?! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Don’t be afraid to prune your stevia plant. It will grow back thicker and faster too!
Hi Halle, I’ve been growing stevia for about three years. I initially bought 2 plants from my local nursery here in Tauranga NZ and planted them out at the end of the season in our herb garden to winter over. The next season I bought two more plants which we left in larger pots and wintered them over in our garden shed. They did a lot better than those other 2 we have planted and I harvested them the other day and got probably 4 times the quantity of leaves to those permanently planted. Our winters are fairly mild with a few light frosts here and there so wintering them over in a garden shed under the skylight is very beneficial. I cut the stems about 4 inches (100 mm) from the base and wash them and lay them on a clean towel to dry in the shed as it gets very warm in summer until they are crisp. Then I strip the leaves (very easy when crisp) and crush them into a small jar or bowl and pour vodka over them till just covered and leave in the pantry for 24 hrs. Then I strain them twice through coffee filters and put into eye dropper type bottles. They keep for ages in the fridge but only use it for tea and coffee as it still has a slight licorise taste. You can heat it to drive off the small amount of alcohol it contains but as I’m using a small amount I don’t bother. I would love to be able to get rid of the aftertaste but that requires heavy duty processing.
mine comes back every year
We have short growing seasons in northern Michigan, so I grow my stevia in a pot and bring it in the house in the winter. I do my harvesting in the summer, but I did not know that the leaves are the sweetest in late summer so will do that next summer. Since I keep the plant in the basement, it is not warm or sunny enough to put on new growth. In fact, the growing parts either significantly deteriorate or die off completely. However, it never fails to put out new growth from the roots (in the past couple of weeks it has begun to do just that). Once the new growth has gotten several inches tall, I cut back last year’s growth. This coming summer will be its 4th season. The hardest part is remembering to water it through the winter months.
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If you have a plant that you need to remember watering, sometimes it’s useful to set up a tiny herb garden in the house, with a plastic cover, a fish bowl with a plastic wrap top, or a bowl with a clear plastic lid can be good. Then with the other herbs stored elsewhere in the house, you can use the visual reminder to remind you about the other plants. The visual garden can also be inside house decor.
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my idea? keep it alive during the winter indoors and then in spring, after frosts, let it grow outside. Mine grew in a raised bed all spring, summer and fall. I harvested repeatedly during the summer. We’ll see if it comes back in the spring.
The plant also grows back every year after harvesting. It grows better every year.
Thank you for the valuable information, i wanted to ask a question about steveia, why many people dont know about steveia if it is healthier option of sweetness and since it has many other benefits why most people are not still aware of it !?
I’ve never thought of making my own stevia…thanks for the info!
Fantastic! Thanks for the solid info. I remember the first time I noticed that they were using fillers that end in ‘ose’ to water the stevia down. I seemed to be the only one concerned, so I stopped buying it. I have three good seedlings that have come up and hope to have plants like yours this year.
Have pinned this and am now a follower. Thanks for a great post!
@Wonderwoman Good for you for having 3 seedling sprouting, that is impressive. Stevia is very hard to grow from seeds, it requires the perfect situations to germinate. Last year a planted an entire packet of seeds ( I think there were 9 seeds) and only 1 plant sprouted. That one plant is the one you see in this video 🙂
@hallecottis
I know what you mean about hard to germinate…I planted two seed packets and only got the three plants! I do use a heat mat on all the seedlings until they break the soil surface. I’m hoping to take cuttings for future plants this fall.
I have been growing stevia in my herb garden for 15 years. I have type 2 diabetes that I cintrol by diet. In zone 8, stevia is supposed to be a perennial. I did have it come up a second year two times. My real challenge is how to convert recipies using my dried leaves.
All of the stevia recipies are made by the manufacturers of commercial processed products.
For converting ANY packet OR dried sweetener please note that crystallized sugar is moistly moisture, so substituting a moist product like applesauce for the ‘amount’ of sugar that’s missing from the recipe can allow you to use the sweetener with the moisture without the sugar and you get the ‘texture’ of a sugar recipe without the sugar being used. Diane Shafer showed me that years ago when she made a sugar free cornbread AND vanilla cake with sweet-n-low and applesauce instead of sugar.
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I am delighted to have found your site and will try your stevia technique immediately. Also wanted to pass onto you and your readers the following info: I bought two stevia plants from The Growers Exchange (http://www.thegrowers-exchange.com) for $5.95 each plus shipping and handling. They arrived very healthy small plants. Prior to this, I spent $49.95 for another stevia plant from an online nursery which arrived nearly dead with bugs in the soil. So beware of some online nurseries. The Growers Exchange sells all types of herbs and I would recommend them as a source to purchase stevia plants and other herbs.
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Hi how long will the water based stevia last when kept in the fridge?
Thanks?
Where did you buy your Stevia plant? I would love to do this!
@allisonsholden The one in the video I actually grew from seed but home depot and lowes now carries them and most nursery’s do as well. It should be in with the herbs.
Thank you for the valuable information, i wanted to ask a question about steveia, why many people dont know about steveia if it is healthier option of sweetness and since it has many other benefits why most people are not still aware of it !?
Wow, I had NO idea you could make stevia!
@varunner7 and look how easy it is too! 🙂
Oh wow, stevia has just been introduced in the markets over here, and I found this post so enlightening. To start with, I did not realise Truvia was a Coca Cola product! It’s lovely to know you can make your own Stevia – I will have to see if I can source the plants for my garden. Thank you so much for sharing this information with the Hearth and Soul hop.
@The21stCenturyHousewife You could always order the seeds online…but note that only about 9 seeds come in a packet and they can be difficult to get them to germinate, but can be done. The stevia in this video was done from seeds 🙂 Thanks for hosting The Hearth and Soul Hop…I always enjoy sharing on there 🙂
I wanted to pass onto you the following info: I bought two stevia plants from The Growers Exchange (http://www.thegrowers-exchange.com) for $5.95 each plus shipping and handling. They arrived very healthy small plants. Prior to this, I spent $49.95 for another stevia plant from an online nursery which arrived nearly dead with bugs in the soil. So beware of some online nurseries. The Growers Exchange sells all types of herbs and I would recommend them as a source to purchase stevia plants and other herbs.
This is great — I know how expensive it is to buy — this would be a real money saver. 🙂
I was going to try to grow it this year. I just need to find some good quality seeds.Thanks for the tip!
@Real_Food_Freak this is where I get my seeds http://www.botanicalinterests.com/products/index/srch:stevia
@Real_Food_Freak not sure why the actual stevia didn’t show up in that website, but just type it in their search and it should pop up. Also there are only about 9 seeds in 1 packet!
Great information! Hope you are having a great Spring week end and thanks for sharing with Full Plate Thursday.
Come Back Soon!
Miz Helen
Wow, I had NO idea you could make stevia!
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Thank you for sharing this interesting post with us last week on AFW! Be sure to check back this week for reader favorites and hostess picks.
Be Well,
Amber & AFW Hostesses
Bit of a Stevia fan myself and a great video! Thanks for sharing this at Natural Mother’s Seasonal Celebration Sunday! x