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fruit juice

TGIF: Fresh screwdrivers!

February 26, 2010

It’s Friday, which means it’s time to kick back a bit, and if you consume alcohol but don’t incorporate your juicer into your drinking I’m here to assure you that you’re missing out!

After my post about the R2D2-ness of my lemon juicer, I noticed that the photo I picked featured oranges, not lemons. Believe it or not, I’d never put an orange through the press-style juicer before!

And I had some Barnivore-approved vodka handy. Science beckoned!

So let’s get to it: I love my R2 unit for lemons, and now I know why: it’s only 2 lemons, max, at a time, which means 4 presses of a smallish fruit. Oranges are bigger, which means I have to press harder, and while I dilute the lemons heavily (usually 1 lemon per quart/liter of water,) these oranges were being diluted with alcohol, which meant I needed more of them.

Because I am somewhat lazy and also needed to retain the ability to write, I ended up using just one orange, which made for one small, if stiff, drink:

freshly squeezed screwdriver

(By the way, I highly recommend these Bodum Pavina Double-Wall Thermo Glasses (affiliate link) for lowball drinks with ice – the insides stay cold longer, and your hand stays warm, plus it just looks cool!)

If I was planning on more than one drink, I’d definitely fire up the Jack LaLanne and make a small pitcher of juice; it’s worth the cleanup time, and also establishes a cutoff point, because I probably wouldn’t make more juice later in the evening.

For one juice though, it was pretty tasty. One advantage (in my opinion) of the R2 over a shred-disc style juicer is that there’s no pith at all, which makes for a really sweet drink, and I guess that needs to be considered – I’ll try a taste test post on some Friday to come, if only because it makes “how’s work?” conversations totally awesome :)

Whatever your juicing technique, a fresh screwdriver is definitely worth the effort over store-bought juice. There was some noise last year about how concentrated orange juice is produced, and it was pretty nasty: a lot of the juice you can buy in stores has been in storage for a year or more, and that’s just for starters. Why, it’s enough to drive one to drink…

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Gear review: 4 ways to juice lemons

February 25, 2010

If you don’t luck out at thrift stores, eBay, or Craigslist, getting started in juicing can be a serious investment.  One easy practice to start with can be adding fresh lemon and water to your morning routine.

Method 1: your hands

The cheapest and messiest way to do this is to cut a lemon in half and squeeze it over a glass with your bare hands while making Hulk sounds.  The Hulk sounds are not optional.

Pros: Cheap, hands readily available, get to sound like the Hulk.
Cons: Messy, doesn’t get as much juice as other methods.

Method 2: citrus reamer

Next up is the simple citrus reamer, which is basically a roundish grindy thing on a stick and looks like this:

citrus reamerI’ll confess, I’ve never used one of these (I skipped right to method 3,) but it seems just about as messy as the bare hands method, and I don’t think you get to make Hulk sounds.

Pros: You can feel superior for using simple tools.
Cons: Still messy, no Hulk sounds.

Method 3:  citrus juicer

There are a lot of variants to this one, but here’s what I grew up with:

citrus juicerYou can get handheld squeezer versions, motorized versions, and even attachments for your food processor, but I always liked the manual style as shown.  They can be a little hard to find if you don’t want the motorized type (I think those are overpriced for what they do and take up too much space) so Amazon’s a good friend here.  Here’s a link to a bunch of them because I had a search open while writing this (and yes, it’s an affiliate link so if you buy something through it we get a kickback.)

Pros: Simple to use, efficient.
Cons: Does not look like R2D2.

Method 4: The Juice Press

This brings us to where we’re at now in our home, with a full-on juice press:

juice pressCome on, am I the only one who sees the R2D2 resemblance? The one we use at home is a vintage Juice King model from the ’50s or so (I think,) which is a little battered but works great. I think of it as R2 during the Battle of Yavin, and the one pictured above is the polished version for the medal ceremony at the end, but I’m a bit of a geek.

Like I said, ours is really really old and it still works great.  Sure, you can use the same massive juicer that you use for your apple carrot juice etc., but the cleanup time is way higher – we basically just run the removable cup under the sink when we’re done.  Sorry to be all commercial and stuff, but the one pictured is only $5o at the time of this post on Amazon, and it’s a darned pretty way to get started juicing.

Pros: Easy to use, fast cleanup, looks like R2D2.
Cons: Takes up counter space.

No matter what method you end up using, fresh lemon juice and water is an incredibly healthy addition to your routine.  Your tastes will vary, but here we typically mix 1 litre (or quart) of water per lemon in a pitcher, or if I’m in a hurry I’ll have half a lemon in a pint glass of water.

I’ve heard recommendations to add cayenne pepper to the mix, but haven’t gotten into that yet.  Limes also juice well with these techniques, though they’re smaller so you may need more of them.

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