Making your own all natural herbal salve is so easy! This salve is the perfect beginner herbal medicine recipe for a beginning herbalist. Use it on minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, bites, stings, rashes and dry skin. It has powerful healing benefits with all of the medicinal herbs it contains, and smells divine! Learn how to make an herbal salve using herbs and plants you can find in your own backyard or grow in your garden.
Homemade Herbal Salve Recipe
I’m so excited for this post as this is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long while! If I had known how easy this is I would have done it years ago.
I’m going to show you how to make an herbal salve with herbs that you can forage or are most likely growing in your garden.
The best part about it is that you can use any number of herbs, it doesn’t have to be the exact ones that I show you here, as there are many that have powerful healing properties.
Choosing and Drying Herbs for Herbal Salve
Alrighty, lets get into the details of this salve making!
The first step in the process is to make an herbal oil infusion, which sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. There are a few different ways to do this, but the first thing you need are herbs.
For this salve I used plantain leaves, comfrey leaves, yarrow leaves and flowers, lavender flowers, and lemon balm leaves.
There are many other medicinal plants and herbs that can be used, such as calendula, St. Johns wort, dandelion, and arnica to name a few.
I foraged the herbs for this salve, but you can also purchase high quality, organic dried herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs.
If you are using freshly foraged or homegrown herbs you will need to dry them first.
Hang them upside down for several weeks, use a drying screen, or if you need them in a hurry and you happen to have a food dehydrator (Excalibur is best), you can use that as well.
Since I was making yogurt in my dehydrator already, I decided to do double duty and dry my herbs at the same time.
In general, it’s important to make sure that your herbs are completely dry before you make your oil infusion or else mold can form and it will go rancid.
There are a few herbs that are better infused fresh however, such as St. John’s wort.
Make the Herb Infused Oil
Now it’s time to make your infused herbal oil. There are a few of ways to do this, the first is to simply put your dried herbs in oil and let it sit in a cool place out of direct sunlight for several weeks.
I will often gently heat my oils as they’re infusing in my dehydrator a few times to help the process along.
You can use several different types of oil for your infusion, but olive oil is the most common. I also like to use coconut oil.
If you need your infused oil sooner, or if you want to use coconut oil which is usually solid at room temperature, you can gently heat the herbs in the oil over a double boiler or in a slow cooker on low heat.
I was short on time and wanted to use some coconut oil, so I decided to go with this method. Plus, I recently acquired a slow cooker that came with a second mini slow cooker, and I discovered that this is the perfect use for it!
Crush up your dried herbs a bit and put them in your vessel, then cover with oil. I used a combination of olive and coconut oil, a total of approximately 1 ½ cups. The more oil you make, the more salve you can make.
Heat for several hours, making sure that it doesn’t get too hot and cook the herbs. I did this in the evening and turned off the heat before bed, letting the herbs continue to steep overnight.
Make the Herbal Salve
The next morning I had a very fragrant herbal oil infusion! Strain it with a sieve and cheesecloth into a bowl that you will be able to use as a double boiler.
Use the cheesecloth and squeeze every last bit of oil into the bowl. Now that you have your herbal infusion, it’s time to gather the rest of the necessary ingredients.
Beeswax (or carnauba wax for vegans), essential oils of your choice, and some sort of vessel to put your finished salve in (such as jars or tins) is all that you’ll need besides the infused oil.
I use about 1 ounce of beeswax (one small stick) per cup of infused oil, and lavender and lemon essential oils, to accentuate the lavender flowers and lemon balm in the salve.
Now everything comes together quite quickly. Put your bowl of herb infused oil onto a pot of boiling water, double boiler style. Cut your wax into chunks and add it to the warm oil.
Once the oil heats up the wax should melt fairly quickly. When it’s completely melted, take the bowl off the heat (it’s probably hot!) and add drops of the essential oils. I did 12 drops of lavender and 6 drops of lemon.
Then carefully pour the salve mixture into the tins or jars.
This batch that I made yielded two 4 ounce and two 2 ounce containers. I like to make various sizes so that I can stash them in different places such as my purse or the car.
Once the tins are full let them sit undisturbed for a few hours to solidify.
That’s all there is to it! It’s pretty amazing what we can make at home with just a few simple ingredients and a bit of time.
This herbal salve is good for minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, bites, stings, rashes and dry skin. I use it on my hands and feet all the time.
Not only does it have astounding healing powers with all of the medicinal herbs that it contains, but it smells absolutely divine!
You can also make this into a lip balm if you’d like, simply add more a bit more beeswax to help it hold up better on your lips.
Lip Balm Recipes
More Herbal Salve Recipes
- Dandelion Salve
- Yarrow Salve
- Plantain Salve
- Calendula Salve
- St. John’s wort Salve
- Bug Balm
- Comfrey Salve
- Manuka Honey Salve
- Diaper Rash Salve
- Pine Salve
Happy herbal salve making!
Herbal Salve
Ingredients
Herb Infused Oil
- 1 ½ cups carrier oil of choice olive, coconut, and/or sweet almond work well
- 1 cup dried herbs plantain, yarrow, comfrey, lavender, calendula, and/or lemon balm are all great options
Herbal Salve
- 1 cup herb infused oil
- 1 ounce beeswax
- 12-24 drops essential oils of your choice optional
Instructions
Herb Infused Oil (slow method)
- Put the dried herbs in a pint jar and cover with carrier oil.Â
- Cover and place in a cool spot out of direct sunlight for 4-6 weeks.Â
- Strain the herbs and reserve the oil for making salves.Â
Herbal Salve
- Heat the infused herbal oil in a double boiler. You can use a metal bowl or glass pyrex measuring cup over a pot of water if need be.
- Add the beeswax and stir until it completely dissolves.
- Remove from heat and stir in the essential oils.
- Carefully pour the mixture into jars or tins and set aside until the salve solidifies.
Notes
- Plantain leaves, comfrey leaves, yarrow leaves and flowers, lavender flowers, and lemon balm leaves would all make great choices for your herbal oil infusion.
- You can alternatively use the quick method for making infused oils by heating the oil and dried herbs in a pot on low heat for up to 12 hours, but the infused oil may not be as potent.
- I did 12 drops of lavender and 6 drops of lemon essential oils.Â
- Use the herbal salve on minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, bites, stings, rashes and dry skin.
Thanks for this great recipe! I can’t wait to try it.
Fantastic recipe!! Thank you for giving me some great ideas. I make a salve but hadn’t thought to add comfrey.
Thanks for the great directions and links for ingredients. I make my own salves from plantain, chickweed and comfry and sometimes combined.
I have made some plain salve and some plain salve with essential oils in it for use at home..I also have some trauma oil sitting now that will be ready in about a week.
I just made my own Elderberry Tincture!!! So excited to learn more to do with herbs and oils. I love your instructional videos they are so easy to understand and not intimidating.
There’s a first time for everything, and I would love to get started on learning about essential oils..
I have made many things for myself and as gifts for others using essential oils. ;)
I LOVE making salves! Ever since my first batch I have been hooked, tthey work tons better than any ither cream and everyone loves them :-)
I have several of those herbs in my garden — funny but I have no plantain in my lawn at all, makes me grumpy! Thanks for the recipe and tutorial.
I have only made a few salves. I used only Coconut Oil, Vitamin E, and a tad of rose oil for the base and then added different EOs, depending on what I wanted to use it for. For chest and foot rub for lungs I added the EOs of Eucalyptus, peppermint, basil, fir needle. It is fun and wonderful to make medicine and I love it.
I have made a plantain salve in the past for my kids cuts.
I just made a hair detangler yesterday that turned out beautifully. Love your post!
I’m studying herbalism & aromatherapy & have made several herbal salves! This is an awesome giveaway!
I started to make my own salve but I accidentally burned my herbs so I have my beeswax bar still need to try to make it just need some new herbs!
I made a Healing Herbal Salve that I’ve since ran out of. Will have to try this recipe!
I haven’t made any but would love to try!
I try to make most of what we use, I make apple cider vinegar herbal hair rinse, body oils, toothpaste, psoriasis/inflammation balm for my husband, itch relief balm, sinus/respiratory balm, depends on circumstances.
Yes, I make a calendula salve that we love !!!
I have never made a salve before. I am so excited about trying it by following this tutorial!
I just made an herbal salve with calendula, lavender , rosemary, and peppermint I would definitely try this one also :)
I have made lotions w/ essential oils but never anything with herbs. I want to learn and would love to win. Thanks for the giveaway.
I just made a wonderful healing salve made with Plantain, Calendula and Comfrey herbs infused with EVOO. These herbs had been infusing for 5 weeks. The aroma was simply lovely when I opened the jar to strain them. I added my beeswax then essential oils of Rosemary, Oregano, Frankincense, Helichrysum and a couple drops of non GMO vitamin E. A family member and a couple of friends at work are having some skin irritating issues so I gave this to them. Oh yes, I also added a few drops of Manukau oil!! The end product was a beautiful shade of green with a heavenly scent and simply enjoyable!
Love essential oils and herbs, have started infusing oils this past month and am ready to make some salve! Thank you for sharing, looking forward to learning more!
I’ve made Plaque Tonic/Fire Cider; elderberry syrup, elderberry tincture, other tinctures, nourishing herbal infusions, herb infused oils, salves. Love herbs and using them!
Nice!
I have rosacea so I make a rose oil light cream that helps make my skin not burn so much.
I’m relatively new and I have been working on creating some trauma oil and some salves. I’m really exciting about getting deeper involved in herbalism!
I have made some body butters with essential oils but not with dried herbs. It would be great to learn more about dried herbs and their uses! Thanks for a wonderful giveaway.
I’ve made eo blends and one attempt at an eczema relief oil. But way more to come
Great post! Love making salves and I love Mountain Rose Herbs.
I love Mountain Rose Herbs also!!