You’ve likely seen and tasted caraway seed in breads, cakes and soups of the traditional European variety, but you may not have ever seen Caraway as a single dōTERRA® essential oil - until now. Give it a whiff, and you’ll probably detect a familiar note if you’ve experienced a certain fan favorite dōTERRA digestive blend. Caraway has a sharp, nutty, and bittersweet quality, distinctive to the point that its front-and-center flavor and aroma definitely don’t fade into the background. The ways you can use Caraway are extensive, having been applied to both cooking and health for thousands of years.
If you come away from this short treatise on Caraway with one idea, latch on to this one for the good of yourself and your loved ones: caraway has been used to support digestion since the days of pharaohs and mummies in Egypt, and those same benefits persist to this day. By the way, have you noticed how name dropping Ancient Egypt adds credibility to almost any statement? Did the Egyptians of millennia ago consider how their records would affect people in the future? Regardless, if caraway proved useful to this ancient civilization, it certainly merits use in our modern one! Another interesting tidbit to know about this plant is that the elongated brown caraway seed is actually a fruit, not a seed. Caraway essential oil is produced through steam distilling these sun-dried fruits, which grow on a plant belonging to the carrot family.
Here are just a few reasons that account for the longstanding popularity of caraway in cuisines across multiple cultures: it freshens breath, soothes digestive discomfort of varying sorts, and acts as an overall tonic to that hard-working system of tubes that faithfully turns food into energy. When you think about it, our amazing digestive system is always working to keep us running at our best, so it makes sense for us to do what we can to support it from the inside out! Try combining Caraway with Peppermint essential oil to create an especially powerful combo for supporting healthy digestion. This interplay could look like a meal seasoned with Caraway, followed by a cup of tea enhanced with a drop of Peppermint.
One key aspect of wellness is the management and maintenance of a healthy weight, which is another area Caraway essential oil touches. When we’re feeling naturally full and satisfied, we tend to stop eating at the appropriate time rather than continuing to consume beyond our physical need; and Caraway can help provide that feeling of satisfaction after a meal. So why not utilize the nutty, bittersweet flavor of Caraway in the kitchen, now that you know how widespread its benefits are to the body? With the world of ethnic cuisine at our fingertips through the wonders of the internet, it’s easy to peruse a selection of Russian, Scandinavian, German, or even Indian recipes calling for caraway until you find one that looks like a winner to your family’s particular tastes. Use dōTERRA Caraway essential oil in place of the dried herb, making sure to use it sparingly until you get a feel for the flavor impact contained within each potent drop.
Not surprisingly, we’ve reached the end of our journey to a Caraway place and have barely touched on what it can actually do. Put dōTERRA Caraway to use in the area of digestion as a simple starting point, and branch out from there to discover a wealth of applications for those stimulating, activating, warming, and cleansing properties.