Easy Way To Make Zobo Drink / Juice At Home

Zobo drink is a Nigerian beverage made from dried calyx of Hibiscus sabdariffa (from Roselle plant flowers). Zobo drink is also known as Zoborodo in some parts of Nigeria. A cold glass of Zobo on a hot sunny day can refresh you just like many of these carbonatted drinks. What many consumers of Zobo drink or juice don’t however know is that this drink has a lot of health benefits.

Some Health Benefits of Zobo Drink

Zobo juice/drink is a rich source of nutrients that activate detoxification. For example, it helps resolve metabolic syndrome in that it promotes the excretion of uric acid from the body. This is just one of the very good benefits of Zobo and since this is not the objective of this post, I would like to move to the topic of how to prepare zobo drink.

The Major Ingredients for Making Zobo Drink

People like to prepare Zobo in different ways because of differences in taste and flavour preferences. However, there are still some ingredients you must use, irrespective of the flavour that you want in your Zobo drink.

These ingredients include;

• 2 cups of dry Zobo leaves
• 1 big piece of ginger
• Potable water

Other ingredients (and substitutes)

Since Zobo juice as it is has a kind of sour taste, people add sugar to sweeten it. If you however don’t want sugar, you can add sweeteners such as Nutri-C or foster Clark’s pineapple flavour to add flavour to it. Note that if you use the foster Clark’s pineapple flavour, you may not need to add sugar any more. If you want to avoid artificial ingredients in their entirety, you can use very ripe Pineapple. Some people also add garlic. I don’t like the taste and smell, so I leave it out of my Zobo.

If you wan to add garlic, add 1 glove of garlic to the ingredients above. You can get all these ingredients in many markets and they are very cheap too.

How to Prepare Your Own Zobo Drink

Get the calyx of the Zobo Hibiscus and wash in water. They are usually displyed in the market in containers with no lid, so you can expect dust on the surfaces. Wash with clean water several times until you are sure you have removed all the dusts. It may seem you have washed all the colour off but it has a lot more in store. So, don’t worry.

If you are using Pineapple, peel and slice it. Peel and slice the ginger (and garlic if you are using it) too into small pieces. Clean them with some water.

Now, put the Zobo calyx and Pineapple into a clean pot and pour water into the pot until it covers them all. Boil for 5 minutes and add your ginger, and garlic if you are using it. Add more water to the pot and leave all the ingredients to boil for 30 minutes.

After this period, you can now remove heat and allow the pot and its content to cool. When cool, wringe out the juice from the pineapples and Zobo leaves, leaving only the Zobo juice in the pot. Sieve this juice, first through a sieve to remove the large particles and then through a fine mesh or Muslin cloth to remove this finer particles.

. You can now refrigerate your Zobo drink and serve chilled.