Make Healthy Juices at Home

With a steam juicer you can learn to make your own healthy juices from fresh  fruits. Not only will these juices be healthier than store bought, but they will most likely be cheaper, too. Not to mention that homemade juice is a great food storage product and is useful in many recipes and drinks!

What Makes a Healthy Juice?

Ever looked at the back of a bottle of commercial juice? Yeah, yikes. From corn syrup components, sorbitol, and other artificial sweeteners, not to mention unknown natural flavors and preservative, store bought fruit juice may not be the healthiest option we have.

Neither is it the most economical!

If you have access to fresh fruit and a steam juicer, you may find that making healthy juices at home will save your health and your money. For example, save tons of money by making your own elderberry juice to for homemade elderberry syrup. 

Additionally, when you make your own, you’ll know there are no residual pesticides, herbicides, preservatives or other unsavory ingredients.

When deciding which heathy juices to make, it’s important to consider a few things.

• First of all, sourcing quality fruit should be a priority. You don’t want to use moldy or otherwise spoiled fruit to make juice with, though bruised fruit is perfectly fine.
• Also, for the healthiest juice, try to find fruit with the most vitamins and nutrients.
• To make it simple, look for the darkest fruits you can find because these typically are the healthiest (highest vitamin C, most phytonutrients, and antioxidants, etc.)

Some vitamins are heat sensitive, like Vitamin C, which can begin to degrade around 85°F/29°C. When fruits and veggies with vitamin C are cooked, the vitamin breaks down in the produce and dissolves into the resulting juices.

Since this is exactly what we want when we’re steam juicing, you’ll still end up drinking the vitamin C. Additionally, a study published in 2017 on the effects of heat on various produce concluded,

Steaming… retained higher concentrations of vitamin C than boiling because of the reduced contact with water at relatively low temperatures.

So, while there may be some nutrient loss in the heat of a steam juicer, enough will be retained to make the juice healthier than a lot of other products you could be drinking!

Besides, the flavor of home-canned juice is worth the effort!

What Equipment is Needed to Make Healthy Juices?

So, what is a steam juicer?

You can use a raw fruit juicer to create healthy juices at home. These juices remain in their raw state and are consumed immediately or frozen for later use. 

However, these juices are NOT shelf stable. If you want to have healthy juice to drink throughout the year that can be stored on your pantry shelves, you’ll need to can the juice in glass jars.

Additionally, if you want to get every possible bit of juice you can from a fruit, a steam juicer is recommended. This is a simple piece of equipment that uses steam to extract the liquid from fruits and even vegetables.

We bought the Cook N Home NC-00256 11-Quart Stainless-Steel Juicer Steamer and it works very well. I also cleans up easily.

You will also need canning jars, seals, and rings.

Fruit Juice Combinations and Suggestions

The best juices we’ve made with a steam juicer are:

• Grape
• Plum
• Cherry
• Tomato, with onion and celery
• Elderberry
• Blackberry/raspberry
• Aronia berry and other tart native berries like haksap and huckleberry
• Sea Buckthorn, cranberry, goji berry, rose hips – in various combinations of these depending on harvests
• Apple
• Apricot

Grape is by far the easiest berry to juice, followed closely by aronia, cranberry, and buckthorn. The soft fruits like blueberry juice well but I don’t like using them up for juice – I’d rather eat them fresh or in pies.

Apple has so much pectin and the water content of each variety is different, so yields can vary widely. I think apples are really better suited to an apple press. If you don’t have a press, a steam juicer will work.

All these juices make nice combinations when paired with each other. Try to combine sweet and tart for the best flavors. For example, apple and cranberry, or grape and aronia berry.

The tomato juice and other veggies make a thoroughly delightful combination akin to commercial V-8®. You can add a bit of sea salt to enhance the flavor. 

Just another nutrient note: an article at Livestrong noted the following…

Rui Hai Liu, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University, reported in the 2002 issue of the “Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry” that cooking increased lycopene in tomatoes by 35 percent.

Tomatoes contain lycopene, a powerful antioxidant, which can potentially be increased with steam juicing!

Using Homemade Healthy Juice

Obviously, juice is made for drinking! Our favorite thing to do with our healthy juices is to mix them with water kefir to make a kind of fruit soda. 

• Nourished Kitchen can teach you how to naturally ferment cherry juice which makes a delicious cherry “soda”. This process can be repeated with pretty much any juice.
• You can also use healthy juices to make homemade jello. 
• Homemade jelly is an excellent way to use extra juice. The difference between jelly and jam is that jelly is made ONLY from the juice of fruits. If you like to forage wild berries, Practical Self Reliance can teach you to make chokecherry jelly.
• I also use the grape juice to mask the flavor of the kids herbal tincture when they’re ill. 
• Like we mentioned at the beginning, you can also use elderberry juice to make elderberry syrup!

If you make jelly, this steam juicing process can cut out all that muck with a jelly bag to strain out seeds and skins. Just steam juice your fruit and follow your recipe adding pectin, etc.

To learn more about some simple jams and jellies you can make at home, I recommend this little book to start with:

To Sweeten or Not to Sweeten Homemade Juice?

“Sweet” is one of those flavors that is completely relative. When we steam juice grape juice, for example, rarely do we add any sweetener. However, when we drink home-canned sea buckthorn juice, we absolutely add a little sweetness.

Sea buckthorn is now considered a superfood and has an enormous amount of vitamin C. However, as Ashley of Practical Self Reliance notes in her article on How to Grow Sea Buckthorn, they are “absurdly tart.” Amen!

Additionally, once a fruit has gone through the steam juicer, the resulting juice is concentrated in flavor. So, to lighten and sweeten the  juice for drinking we mix:

• one quart of home canned juice
• one quart of filtered water
• with maple syrup, monk fruit sugar or honey to taste

Keep tasting it and adding sweetener until your taste buds tell you you’re done.

Learn to make fruit syrups from your healthy juices, too. Fruit syrups can be added to ice drinks, ice creams, and so many more healthy treats!

If you’d prefer an herbal version, here’s our article on Herbal Flower Syrup.

Tutorial on Making Healthy Juices with a Steam Juicer

Here are some basic instructions. I would also recommend you go to YouTube and watch videos there. What did we ever do before YouTube?! Oh, yeah, we read books.

How to Make Your Own Fruit Juice

Prepare the Fruit

1. First, if you’re going to wash your fruit, wash it. Even though I don’t use pesticides, I wash my fruit because I live in a dusty climate.
2. Pit, core, or de-stem your fruit. Seeds can be left in your fruit, though. You’re really just removing all those other parts to make more room for fruit in your steam juicer. I’m usually too lazy to take grapes off their stems and just put everything into the steam juicer.
3. You can use less than perfect fruit for making healthy juices because the steam juicer doesn’t care about bruises. Do NOT use moldy fruit.

Filling the Steam Juicer and Setting it Up

1. Place your fruit inside the strainer basket that comes with the steam juicer. To get the most amount of juice, really fill the basket with fruit. Be sure you can tightly secure the lid on the top.
2. Fill the steam bottom section about 3/4 full with water and place on the stove on high heat to start the process.
3. Place the collecting pan on top of the bottom section. This pan will collect all the juice that’s pulled out of your fruit by the steam and is the section with the tubing attached to it. The juice runs through the tube from the collecting pan into clean, prepared jars. I use quart of half gallon sized canning jars.

Tips and Tricks of the Steam Juicer

1. ALWAYS keep the clamp on the tube so that you don’t lose it. During operation, you can hang the tube up on the handle by the clamp to keep it out of your way. FYI, the clamp will sometimes leak because of pressure variations, so each time you use it, keep that in mind.
2. Also bear in mind that as you push the clamp in, the juice will come out…and so will some wicked hot steam. Always keep your hand behind the clamp to avoid seriously scalding yourself. I think I may have uttered a few unladylike choice phrases every time I burned myself forgetting to keep my hand out of the way.
3. On top of the collecting pot, you place the basket in which you’ve placed your fruit, followed by the lid. It’s important to secure the lid tightly. Otherwise, your steam will escape and you’ll get nothing, except a steam facial.

More Tips on Using the Steam Juicer

• Make sure you keep the water level at least halfway up the bottom steamer or you’ll burn up the bottom of your pan and the process will stop. Ask me how I know. The pan will be fine with some cleaning but you’ll waste your time. Make a habit of checking your water level often.
• The steamer basket can be emptied when you feel you’ve extracted all the fruit has to give. To make sure you get all the juice you can, use a potato masher to press down your fruit. If you have more fruit to process, refill the basket and place right back on the unit. After checking your water level, of course.. All that left over mash makes a great treat for your chickens or pigs…or compost pile.

The process of making healthy juice with a steam juicer works like any other steaming device. Don’t let all the parts confuse you.

You’re creating steam, putting in fruit to cook, and then taking out the spent fruit. The steam juicer is essentially sucking the life blood out of the fruit through the tube. Sort of a violent process when you think about it.

Finishing Up with the Steam Juicer

1. As the steam pulls the juice from the fruit, the collection pot begins to fill up. As the collection pot fills, so will the tubing so make sure you’ve got it elevated so it doesn’t leak.
2. When you feel like it’s been long enough, place the tube end into a glass jar and release the clamp. Time will vary but give the steam enough time to thoroughly heat the fruit. Also, watch for the tubing to fill up with juice.
3. Make sure you don’t leave the juice too long in the collection pot or it will overflow into your bottom pot. You’ll end up with your wonderful, healthy juices all over your stove.

What? That wasn’t me; that just happened to someone I know. Ahem…

Jar Filling Tip and Finishing

We usually build a tower of buckets in front of the stove for the jars to stand on. The glass gets too hot to hold as the jars fill and the buckets brings the jars right to your tubing.

You can hot process these jars of healthy juice in a water bath canner and seal them for storage according with the times found at the National Center for Home Preservation.  The juice will most likely only need five or ten minutes in a water bath canner.

You can also refrigerate your healthy juice and drink it within a week.

• When you’re done with your steam juicer, simply wash all the parts. Make sure to run hot, soapy water through the tubing.
• Remember to attach that clamp to your unit when you’re done washing and drying it so you don’t lose it. Losing your clamp would be remarkably inconvenient and messy.

Have you steam-juiced at home? Do you have a favorite fruit or combination you’d like to share?