Is argan oil from a nut?

Many readers have asked me this question before: is argan oil from a nut?

And the answer is always: yes, argan oil is extracted from argan nuts.

Argan oil is produced when goats eat the argan fruits, they digest the pulp and, excuse me for the details, pass out of hard shelled nuts!

Then, people pick these hard shelled nuts and crack them, of course after sun drying and cleaning them.

In the afternoon, after doing their housework, women from villages in the South of Morroco gather around some bread and Moroccan mint tea and crack the nuts, of course after washing them thoroughly and exposing them to sunlight to help later on with the argan oil extraction.

I've attended many of these gatherings and they are very fun, children are playing around while women are singing and older women are instructing younger ones about the best ways to crack and use the argan nuts.

Then, there are two techniques for extracting the argan oil from nuts:

The first one is essential for producing cosmetic argan oil, and requires grinding the nuts without roasting them, this gives a very bitter and highly aromatic argan oil, it’s very bitter.

This oil is primarily used for cosmetics and is added in lots of shampoos and hair products.

Argan oil is very expensive because it’s extremely time-consuming and women may even pass six months to produce about five liters of argan oil each!

The second technique of extracting the argan oil from the nuts is traditional and the one that has been used in Morroco for hundreds of years.

And it consists of roasting the argan nuts a little, just to cure them from their bitterness and to increase their flavors.

Then they are gruinded and the oil is extracted using stone mils that are so traditional and emblematic of Morroco.

This is how argan oil is extracted from nuts.