A juicer is one of those things that a lot of people consider purchasing but are hesitant to do so for fear that it will become yet another kitchen gadget that sits in storage gathering dust once the novelty has worn off. I’d always wanted a juicer, but Lauren always provided the voice of reason and whenever I bought up the idea it was swiftly shut down. How then, did we end up with a juicer? Well it ended up coming down to the growth of The City Lane actually.
Running a website that has such a focus on food invariably involves eating out and going out for drinks a lot. Be it regular socialising with friends, trying out new places on our list or going to events that we’ve been invited to, we’re always out and about. It’s great fun don’t get me wrong, but all of those calories have to go somewhere. How then, to balance things out? One side is to obviously burn off those calories, and regular exercise is a part of our lives. The other part is to make sure we’re eating as healthy as we can when we are preparing food for ourselves, and to ensure we’re getting in enough fruit and veg. Enter, the juicer.
Lauren and I bought (after a lot of research) an Oscar VitalMax DA 900 earlier in the year and it’s done anything but gather dust on the shelf. We use it to make fresh juices which we drink for breakfast on most days during the week. It’s a great way to ensure you’re getting all of the vitamins and minerals that you need in your diet and our only regret is that we didn’t get a juicer sooner. We’ve tried quite a few different combinations of ingredients over the months and have decided to share some of our favourite juices with you. We’re calling this the “Super Juice Colour Series”, because, as you can guess, each of the featured juices has a prominent colour.
To kick things off is the Green Juice which, apart from ginger, uses only green produce. It tastes great, isn’t overly sweet, and has a slight kick courtesy of the ginger.
Preparation Time: 5 minutes / Juicing Time: 5 minutes / Makes 1 Litre
Ingredients
- 2 Granny Smith apples (or equivalent tart apple) ~275g
- 1 Packham pear (or equivalent green, sweet pear) ~275g
- ½ cucumber ~150g
- 2 sticks celery ~275g
- 8 full-sized Lacianto (Dinosaur) kale leaves ~90g, plus stalk ~75g
- 20 mint leaves ~10g
- 2cm knob ginger, ~20g
Method
- Cut the ingredients to the required size as determined by the juicer you are using.
- Add the soft ingredients first. They will be mushy but the harder ingredients you add afterwards will help to push it all through.
- Once you’re through all of the ingredients, you can keep the juice concentrated or add some water to dilute it. We like to top it up until we have 1 litre total – about 3/4 juice and 1/4 water.
- Enjoy now, or pour into a container and refrigerate. We generally have 2 x 250ml glasses when made in the morning, and save the remaining 500ml for the following morning.
Notes
A cold press juicer is better than a centrifugal one as the lack of heat means that less oxidation occurs. What this means is that more of the nutrients are retained. While storing the juice in the fridge will keep it good for several days, it’s best to drink within 48 hours to ensure you get the most nutrients.