Juicing 101 or Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Juicing I Learned From the Check Out Guy at Whole Foods.
You know the old saying that amounts to never giving a woman an appliance as a gift? Thankfully it didn’t cross the Atlantic because for Mother’s Day last year my British husband conspired with a friend of mine to get me the best present ever: A Breville Juicer.
It went down like this: A month before Mother’s Day, Nick enlisted my friend Martine’s help in picking out a juicer for me. Martine undertook the research like she was deciphering The Rosetta Stone. It turns out there are a LOT of juicers out there but after a few days she recognized that it basically comes down to whether you want a masticating juicer or a centrifugal juicer. There are advocates for both but after a ton of time on-line, questions for Nick about what kind of juice I like, and visiting Williams-Sonoma an unhealthy amount of times (what number would that be exactly?) Martine decided a centrifugal juicer was the way to go. She emailed Nick her recommendation and justification and he went online to buy it only to find out that the Williams-Sonoma website was out of them. Uh oh. Ever vigilant, Martine went BACK to her neighborhood Williams-Sonoma and had them ship the one from the store directly to New Orleans so that I would wake up to a brand new juicer, and a bag of carrots, on Mother’s Day.
And that my friends, is why your friends and your loved ones should always have one another’s email addresses.
The question that arose, shortly after receiving the juicer, was what exactly I was going to juice. Checking out at the grocery store, or going to the farmer’s market, amounted to me being worse than a new parent.
“Oh, this enormous bag of carrots? Why I have a juicer. Do you juice?”
“Oh, did I forget to tag my golden beets? Don’t worry, I am just going to be juicing them.”
I was SUCH a bore. Until one day someone bit! A guy at whole foods was a bigger juicing bore than I was and he proceeded to give me all of his tips and recipes. Beets? Throw the whole things in there. Stalk and all. No, don’t peel them. Ginger, don’t peel it. You haven’t heard of juicing a jalapeno? What, have you been juicing under a rock? Kale? doesn’t really work without a masticating juicer (SO true). Broccoli – eat the florets and juice the stalks (still haven’t taken his word on that one). Cucumber. Throw some lime in. Apples sweeten things up. He couldn’t stop himself, and I was trying desperately to hang on to every word.
He inspired me, and from that point on I spent weeks experimenting with combos. After a ton of trial (and a fair amount of error) I’ve started generally going back to the staples: Carrots, beets, apples, lemons, limes, oranges, cucumber and ginger.
Other fruits like grapes, pineapple and melon may indeed make great juice, but I love to eat them whole so much that I can’t stand to blend them. Sorry.
And recently I’ve adopted the strategy of making large juices in the morning, sealing leftovers in a Ball jar and then having them as an afternoon snack. Feels very Melanie Griffith in Working Girl (before Sigourney Weaver broke her leg) or maybe Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada (before she discovered Spanx and the color black) but either way you get it, right? I kid you not, a juice in the afternoon is a better pick me up than coffee. HOWEVER, hear this about juicing in advance: The important thing is to drink it within 24 hours or it turns into a vitamin-less, bacteria filled pumpkin. At least that’s what it says on the internet.
Now, my first and best tip to you, before we get into combos, is this: Wash, peel and quarter everything you are going to juice and put it in a metal bowl, then go to the juicer with everything ready to go. It sounds simple but the process of stopping and peeling and washing while also juicing just makes a really big mess, and will make you think juicing is way messier than it really is.
Lastly, instead of just giving you a bunch of recipes I decided I’d give you some of my favorite combos and the yields of some common items as well. I meticulously weighed, juiced, measured, combined and tasted. Use the information below to figure how much of what you can put into your own custom juice. What I find works best is to counter the healthy earthy flavors of carrots, beets and kale with citrus – like orange, lemon or lime. Also throw in some ginger to make you forget you are drinking a beet.
My favorite combinations (based on making extra):
2 beets – 2 carrots – 2 apples – 1 lemon
3 carrot – approx 1 cup pineapple – 1 blood orange – approx 50g ginger
1 cucumber – 3 apples – half bunch mint – 1 lemon
3 carrots – 2 stalks celery – 2 oranges – 1 apple – approx 50g ginger
3 carrots – 2 apples – 2 oranges – approx 50g ginger (probably my most frequent combo)
Lisa the Kitten Williford
January 22, 2014 at 14:04I’ve been seriously considering getting a juice myself and am curious why you (and Martine) went with the centrifugal and not the masticating . . . I’ve been leaning towards masticating (hate that word, incidentally) so that I can juice foods like kale and other healthy veggies.
Any advice is greatly appreciated (and not boring at all)!
Martine
January 23, 2014 at 11:05Lisa, centrifugal vs masticating is actually a question that a lot of people struggle with when researching juicers, me included. Both juicers have their supporters and detractors. First I want to explain the difference between a centrifugal juicer and a masticating juicer. Centrifugal juicers spin the ingredients at very high speed, and basically slices into smaller and smaller pieces until they’re basically just pulp. As the produce shreds into smaller and smaller parts the centrifugal motion pulls juice out of the pulp. At the same time, the puree flows through a series of small holes in a filter, separating the liquid from the flesh. A masticating juicer does just that. It masticates; kind of like our teeth do. “To masticate” means “to chew.” Fresh juice ingredients are pressed down onto a pair of grinding teeth arranged to turn produce into a pulpy mash. Again, a filter separates the liquid from the pulp. So, the first slices to a pulp, and the second chews to a pulp.
When Nick asked for my help, he had very specific requirements. He wanted speed, easy clean up, efficiency, and a machine that required limited counter space. So those were the points that I focused on when starting my research.
Speed – Centrifugal juicers operate at higher speed than masticating juicers due to the fact that they spin very fast, and slice. The caveat there is that because of the high speed and friction of centrifugal models there is the slight possibility of excess heat being transferred into the liquid. Apart from warming your drink a bit when you might prefer it cool, that can affect the juice’s nutritional value – at least that is what several resources claim. Basically enzymes in natural juice help you digest it for maximum value. If the enzymes are heated they can be broken down, destroyed, and therefore useless. But juice enzymes never actually reach that level of degradation. Something like that can only happen with juice that gets way too much heat. But today’s centrifugal juicers are designed to take that possibility into account and do an excellent job of preventing it.
Easy clean up – This was honestly a toss us. Most juicers are fairly similar in that ingredients are still pushed into the top, so the amount of “mess” for both was about the same.
Efficient – meaning extracted as much juice as possible from the ingredients. Again, masticating juicers were preferred because they were presumably better at extracting juice. That is, they generated more liquid from the same fruit or vegetable than a centrifugal model. I say presumably because that’s not necessarily true now. Newer centrifugal designs do a great job of extracting anything and everything an equivalent cost/quality masticating model would; particularly the Breville line of centrifugal juicers, which is the brand that Jessica has.
Took up limited counter space – Centrifugal juicers are normally more upright, therefore take up less space, whereas masticating juicers tend to be squatter and wider, so they spread out quite a bit more.
So, after doing my research, and for the reasons listed above, I decided that the centrifugal was the best purchase. However, what I will add is that because centrifugal machines spin a high speed, that speed can sometimes be too hard on bananas, spinach, and similar produce. So you have to think about the ingredients that you’re going to be juicing most often. That said, here again some centrifugal models have multiple speeds. Set the unit on low and you’ll get exactly what you like even with the softest of produce. Jessica can probably weigh in on this portion a bit more, since she uses many different ingredients, and she juices a lot more than I do.
That was a really long answer to your question, but I hope it helps!
Lisa the Kitten Williford
January 23, 2014 at 11:35That was an excellent response, Martine! Thanks for all of the detailed information – you did some rather exhaustive research. My initial foray into investigating juicers indicated that the Breville line seemed to be the preferred brand (they get good scores from Consumer Reports) – particularly as I can’t afford a VitaMix – however, I’ll take your input and continue my search.
Thanks again!