My best kitchen purchase ever: a juicer. A bought it a year ago and have been using it about every two days. Superhealthy and really, really delicious. Friends love it, too.
Here are some good-to-knows, tips and tricks:
How does a juicer work:
This is how the juicer works: vegetables and fruits are grated into pulp. The pulp is being centrifuged and thus pushed outward against the walls with very fine holes. Only the juice and finest pulp goes through. The result: superfresh, naturally cloudy juice. Best is to choose a machine that fits whole apples in the shaft.
The above is for high-speed juicers. If you want to retain even more nutrients in your juice, choose a mechanically driven slow juicer.
What do you need for juicing?
For fruit juices, use apples or pears as a basis. Jason Vale (Philips’ marketing puppet juice chef): apple-sandwich. Start with an apple, stuff in anything else you lie in your juice and then end with an apple again. It works for me! I always have apples, pears, kiwifruits, carrots, lemons, ginger, mint, beetroot and leafy greens lying around so i always have my favorite juice ingredients at hand.
Don’t peel your veggies!
Apples, pears, carrots, beets, cucumbers, zucchinis, and even lemons and pineapples (well, be a bit careful with those): don’t peel! That would be a waste of vitamins ánd time! They can all go inside the juicer without peeling.
Juicing oranges
Oranges and clementines do need to be peeled (but not lemons and limes), because the rind holds bitter oils which will spoil your juice.
Juicing bananas
Veggies and fruits with a lot of starch, are not suitable for the juicer. The filter would get clogged with pulp. Ideally, use a blender or hand mixer to blend banana, avocado, papaya, mango, prunes etc into the juice.
Superfast juicing process
I’ll let mr. Vale do the talking:
Recipe for Apple-kiwifruit-avocado juice:
Juice 3-4 apples and 1-2 kiwis. Blend the juice with one half avocado. The avocado creates a deliciously light, luffy, creamy texture. It’s like ice cream, everybody loves it!
(Update, 4+ years later: I still love juicers, nothing beats the taste of fresh juice! But I found with all those juices, I was drinking a LOT of sugar and missing most of the fibres. And although I often used the pulp to make something different, it felt like a pity to leave so much of the fruit and veg unused. Long story short… I’m back to smoothies, using the blender. Simply add water or any kind of juice to chunks of whole fruits and vegs in the blender and you can basically drink your daily dose.)
hey, Thank you very much for this post. I have been trying to get into juicing. I recently bought a new juicer. I think I am ready to start juicing. but the few juices that I made is not that tasty. Can you help me with some tasty and healthy juice recipes? I want some recipes that I can drink every day in the morning. thank you for your post. really helpful and informative.
Hey Whitney, lovely that you’re reaching out. I don’t have more recipes ready for publication, but I have always used a nice trick that seemed to work: the apple sandwich. As descibed in my post! Just start with an apple, finish with an apple and put an equal amount of fruits & veggies in. Generally, red and orange fruits may appeal more than green leafs and veggies, largely due to their sugar content. A classic, and great for breakfast, is the ABC-juice: Apple, Beetroot, Carrot (and I like to add ginger for a little kick). Juices do have a lot of sugars though, and no fibres to help balance your blood sugar. Check out my recent ABC-Smoothie bowl recipe for a healthier alternative (unless you’re juice fasting): https://juuth.com/abc-smoothie-bowl-apple-beetroot-carrot/.
Hi Juuth, I lover your research on best juicing avocado . thank you for sharing this great post