When we say «hemp», the imagination usually pictures canvas, rope or sail. Yet the plant had a second, far quieter life — in the kitchen. People have eaten hemp seed for millennia, and in the Russian tradition it held a place that is hard to picture today: it was pressed into oil, ground into «milk», and added to Lenten dishes. This is a story not about prohibition or fibre, but about how a small greyish-green grain fed people — and how it was processed long before factories existed.
Fibrous Old Rus: a plant woven into daily life
The old phrase «fibrous Rus» (Rus poskonnaya) was no accident. Poskon is hemp fibre, from which a coarse but sturdy cloth was woven; the ancient Slavs used hemp widely and every day. The plant accompanied a person quite literally from the cradle onward — in clothing, in linen, in household implements. Against this dense cultural background, eating the seed seemed entirely natural: if the plant already grew by every yard, it would have been strange not to use its grain.
And the seed was used. Unlike the fibre, it went not into the loom but into the mortar and under the press. This is where the history of processing — the part that interests us — truly begins.
The oil mill: turning grain into oil
The chief product of hemp-seed processing was oil. It was pressed at small oil mills (masloboynya) — essentially household or village pressing setups, where the seed was first pounded and ground, then squeezed under a press. No chemistry, no solvents: the process was wholly mechanical and cold. The greenish tint of the finished oil and its distinct nutty taste were considered normal — no one tried to «correct» them, because that is exactly how real hemp oil was meant to look.
Hemp oil was an everyday «Lenten oil» — the ordinary fat used for cooking, drizzled over porridge and bread, used to dress vegetables. It was not regarded as a rarity or a delicacy; it was a routine product of the peasant and town table, accessible and familiar.
Hemp milk and the Lenten table
The second important product was «hemp milk». It was made by grinding the seed with water, yielding a thickish whitish liquid that resembled animal milk in both look and role. In a world where the Orthodox calendar included long fasts, a plant-based substitute for milk was not a whim but a necessity.
Hemp milk and oil fitted naturally into the Lenten kitchen. Porridges were cooked on them, kissels were made, simple dishes were enriched — all of it meant to stay filling while doing without anything of animal origin. In this way hemp seed became not a mere addition but the backbone of a whole layer of traditional cookery.
One clarification is worth making at once: we are speaking of oil, milk, porridges and kissels. Tolokno, contrary to a common confusion, was made from oats, not from hemp — and attributing «tolokno» to hemp would be a mistake.
Why seed oil was cold and «green»
The technology of seed processing stayed remarkably constant over the centuries precisely because it was simple and honest. The seed was pounded or ground, squeezed under a press — and the oil came out in its original state. The absence of heat and chemical treatment meant the product kept everything nature had given it, colour and taste included.
- Pounding and grinding the seed — the first mechanical stage;
- Pressing without heat — the cold method of obtaining oil;
- A green tint and nutty taste as a natural norm, not a defect;
- The complete absence of solvents and chemistry at every stage.
How hemp oil was pushed off the shelf
For a long time hemp and flax oils were the everyday, most ordinary vegetable oils in Russia. The change came in the 19th century, when sunflower oil entered common use. Its first pressing in Russia is associated with D. S. Bokaryov and the year 1829; sunflower oil became a mass product precisely in the 19th century. Cheap, light and neutral in taste, it gradually displaced the older oils and took their place at the table.
So hemp oil began to retreat — first as an everyday product, giving way to a more convenient rival. But the final blow to the tradition came not from market competition, but from the events of the next century.
Decline: how a whole tradition vanished
In the 20th century, prohibitive measures closed in on hemp. The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the crop within strict limits; in the USSR the areas under hemp were sharply reduced, and by the 1990s cultivation had all but ceased. With the fields, the food processing of the seed disappeared as well: oil mills closed, recipes were forgotten, and the skills were not passed on to the next generations.
The knowledge and traditions survived only in part — in a few families, in ethnographic records, in the memory of the older generation. What had been ordinary for centuries turned, within a few decades, into a nearly forgotten page of food history. Hemp oil went from an everyday product to a rarity most people simply no longer remembered.
The return — now on an industrial basis
The turn came in 2007, when Russia legalized the cultivation of domestic industrial hemp varieties with a THC content below 0.1% — there were 28 such varieties. The plant returned to the legal field, and with it the food processing of the seed gradually returned as well. But it returned changed.
The old processing was artisanal and domestic: a mortar, a press, a kitchen or a village oil mill. The new is a documented and standardized production. Grinding by hand gives way to impact dehulling, which separates the kernel from the hull; the pressing is still cold, but now controlled and reproducible; to it are added CO₂ extraction, laboratory quality control and work to the FSSC 22000 food-safety standard.
In essence, it is the same old Russian food practice — oil, kernel and flour from hemp seed — transferred from the peasant kitchen to an industrial, controlled basis. What changes is not the nature of the product but the scale and precision with which it is made.
This food side of a long tradition — the processing of the seed — is what OOO «Makosh» continues on an industrial basis, as the first full-cycle deep-processing plant for hemp seed in Russia and a resident of the «Uzlovaya» Special Economic Zone; its range includes kernel, cold-pressed oil, flour and fibre, with specifications and samples available on request.
This is what we make
We make all of this ourselves — a full-cycle plant in the Uzlovaya SEZ, 0% THC.
Hulled hemp hearts (separated)
Protein over 30% · omega-3/6
Cold-pressed green hemp seed oil
Omega-6 : omega-3 = 3.5 : 1
Hemp protein flour
Protein 40–45 g/100 g
We’ll match a product to your production need and send samples with documents.