Buying and Drying Malunggay in Singapore

Where can you buy malunggay in Singapore?

I live in the Jurong West area and I hear mass at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi on Boon Lay Avenue. I asked around and I was told that there's a wet market behind the church.

On Friday morning, July 23, I walked from the church to the wet market. It's actually a cluster of kopitiams, small grocery stores, and small dry goods store. I walked all the way down to the very back of the cluster.

This is a stem of malunggay leaves. It's about 2 feet long.

Obliquely to the right of the last kopitiam, there is a small wet market consisting of fish, poultry, and vegetables. There's one vegetable stall which sells malunggay. It's supposed to be the only store which carries malunggay.

One bunch which consists of 9 to 14 stems cost SGD1.00. (Please see the picture in my previous post below, or google 'malunggay.') I bought three bunches. I removed the abundant leaves from the stems and put them inside a rattan basket.

Here's a close-up of the leaves.

From past experience, I knew that left-over fresh malunggay does not keep well inside a ref. After a few days, the leaves become soggy and blackish in the ref.

How to dry malunggay

I read somewhere that the fresh leaves can be dried by simply airing them inside a net bag. I used a rattan basket because I don't have a net bag.


Post-leaves harvest: Malunggay stem (right photo)


So I had fresh malunggay on day 1.

On day 2, I had half-dry malunggay.

After a week, I now have brick-like malunggay leaves.

I must tell you that I turned the leaves in the basket once in the morning and once in the evening.

That's to ensure that the drying would be even.

By the way, the dried leaves are supposed to contain 3x the nutrients in fresh leaves.