How I made Gum from Douglas Fir trees using an air fryer

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    The gum from trees is not only free but there are also medical benefits to doug-fir needles as well as the resin. There are also benefits to chewing gum, especially gum is hard to chew like this one, which strengthens jaw muscles and the muscles of the face which then make the breath-ways expand, leading to more effective breathing anyways, according to a chapter in one of my favorite books, Breath the science of a lost art, by James Nestor.



There are a few things you need for this:

*Note: Anything you use will get a bunch of resin on it and it is very difficult to remove, so it is best to use stuff and keep it for making tree gum 
  • Douglas fir resin
  • A knife to collect the resin (it is very sticky and I do not recommend touching the resin before you cook it)
  • A container for the resin (in my case a small glass jar)

And then for cooking/heating the resin and straining the debris (insects, bark, lichen) out of the resin 

  • A means of heating it (i.e. airfryer, oven, closed lid on a stovetop, on top of a fire, anything that can get above 180°F
  • A container for the unheated resin to flow into
  • A mesh for the stuff to go through (I used cheesecloth, I have also heard of people using old clothes or coffee filters)
  • Container with water to cool the resin
  • Ideally a spoon too


The Process:

1. Harvest the gum from a Douglas fir, most conifers have some kind of resin that can be used for gum
2. I put the container with the resin upside down in a slightly larger mason jar with a cheesecloth that the resin flowed through, but anything similar would work, I have seen people use tin cans and poke holes in it, but with that you need to be careful that the can has no inner plastic lining (BPA free or something similar will be marked on the can)
3. Heat it up (I turned my air-fryer to about 360°F
4. Keep an eye on it, it is cool to watch it flow into a more liquid form, be careful not to touch it when it is very hot
5. After it looks like its not really flowing, you can scoop the resin with a spoon and put it into a container with glass, at this point the resin shouldn't be super sticky and once it goes in the water it will rapidly cool and harden forming an amber glass structure that you can either mold (if warm) or break (if very hard) into gum sized bites

6. Chew! You can chew the same piece of gum for days and it will not lose its flavor, I also enjoy how it breaks at first and then reforms as you chew it and it warms up in your mouth.


And that's it! This really is a simple process! You never need to pay for gum again!







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