How To Make Orange Juice With A Blender

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As we know well, home-made recipes with natural ingredients are usually the best for a healthy lifestyle. With juices, for instance, the fruits and leafy greens used tend to pack a lot of nutrients that can be very helpful to the body. Each plant species has specific, which means these health benefits will vary. As our first, this article will show you how to make orange juice with a blender.

Needless to say, a juicer is the best option when you need to extract some ounces of juice from the fruits, for sure. But for some reason, most homes usually have a blender in the kitchen. And for the fraction with a juicer still invest in a blender, anyways. Why?

Similar Post: How to make Apple juice with a blender

What So Special About Blenders

At a glance, a blender is just an ordinary, simple-looking machine than most kitchen appliances. However, the tool is fairly versatile, allowing you to do more than what other food processing gadgets have in the bag.

How To Make Orange Juice With A Blender

For a model, [almost] all consumer juicers are specifically for juicing purposes, nothing more or less. With a blender, however, you can do a whole lot of culinary processes, including making smoothies, milling grains, food prep, and now making juices. If you have a top-of-the-line blender like Vitamix, you can even heat the soup as you go.

Long story short, most blenders are also very affordable and easy to maintain.

Making Juice with a Blender

Without a doubt, a juicer is the most efficient tool when you need to prepare any juice. The extraction system of the machine usually consists of a cutting disc and a strainer mechanism. Hence, it’s able to grind the ingredients and sieve for the clear liquid from the within.

This is totally different from a blender as it only has the cutting disc at the center of the blending container. So, you will first get a thick blend, comprising all parts of the included materials, including the stems, skin, and even seeds. Stems and skin mostly consist of insoluble fiber, which is why the blended mixture will have a denser texture.

Then, blenders don’t have an inbuilt strainer like their counterpart- juicer. So, after extracting the nutrients from the fruits, you’ll now need to milk juice from the produced puree.

Of course, you can continue using the blend while still as a puree. But after removing the insoluble materials, you will find the juice smoother and tastier to drink.

How to Make Orange Juice with a Blender

As mentioned at the beginning, natural homemade juices are the best if you want to remain healthy. The beverages are usually full of the nutrients from the fruits and vegetables they have been extracted from. Hence, a great means to cleanse and detoxify the body while simultaneously quenching your thirst.

Nonetheless, the nutrients your body gets to absorb from each kind of juice do vary since various foods have different vitamins and minerals. If it is fruits, apples and berries have rich antioxidant properties to help your body fight disease-causing bacteria.
Meanwhile, our subject- oranges, have several nutritional values as well, plus an added blending/ juicing advantage that many foods lack.

What’s So Special about Orange Juice?

First of all, oranges are very easy to extract the juice. Similar to other citrus species, the fruit has soft meat and high content of moisture. So, you will not need as much water as when preparing a thin juice from apples. Furthermore, the high water content makes it easier to milk the juice out of the orange puree.

Another thing, a well-made orange juice, with no artificial sweeteners and or preservatives contains most of the nutrition from orange fruits.

Here’s a chart showing some of the main nutrient values, plus their health benefits to the body. We’ve arranged the various values starting from the highest going downwards.

Nutrients Benefits
Vitamin C Boosts functions of the immune system and maintain the health of bones, cartilage, & teeth
Dietary Fiber Helps maintain gut health, normalize bowel movements, and control blood sugar levels
Vitamin B-6 Helps boost brain health, improve mood, reduce symptoms of depression, and lower risk of Anemia
Potassium Helps regulate fluid balance, improve muscle contractions and nerve signals, plus reduce blood pressure
Carbs & Natural Sugars Main source of energy to fuel the brain, heart muscles, central nervous system, and kidneys
Calcium Maintain strong bones and help the muscles, heart, and nerves function properly
Vitamin A Great to improve vision, skin, bones, other tissues’ health. It also has minor antioxidant properties
Magnesium Assist in managing type 2 diabetes, fight depression, lower blood pressure, and reduce inflammation symptoms

Recipe 1: How to Make Plain Orange Juice

Before you even start processing, the first to do is to decide the servings you need to have. It’s what will determine the amount of ingredients to use and ensure you prepare enough juice..

Ingredients

  • 4 [600 g] oranges
  • ½ cup [120 ml] water

Directions

  • Clean the oranges and cut them into two halves horizontally
  • While using a fork or bread-knife, remove the seeds from all the orange halves.
  • Now peel your orange halves and separate the carpels for easier blending
  • Once done with that, transfer your orange pieces into the blending jug
  • Add around half-cup water to enhance the blending process
  • Secure the lid of the blending container
  • Turn the machine on
  • Blend your mixture for 1 minute or until all the fruits are liquefied smooth
  • Transfer the orange blend to a bowl lined with a strainer, cheesecloth, or nut milk bag
  • Strain the puree very well. If you’re using a cheesecloth or nut milk bag, continue twisting until you extract maximum juice. And if it’s a strainer, keep pressing with a spoon until you extract all the liquid. Then, discard the remains [in the strainer device].
  • By this stage, you should now have fresh orange juice in the collector bowl. For the four oranges, you should have about 960 ml of fresh, delicious juice, which is equivalent to 2 servings.
  • Finally, serve your home-made juice immediately and proceed to appreciate your efforts

Please note, the seeds from citrus fruits are not poisonous to consume. As such, you can skip step 2 if you won’t mind your juice having a bitter taste.

Recipe 2: How to Make Orange Juice Plus

The whole idea of making your juice is to ensure you’re giving your body only what it needs. So, you shouldn’t put any kind of artificial sweeteners to the mixture as that will defeat the purpose intended.
Here’s a simple method if you’d like to give your juice a special twist with a bit of vanilla extract.

Ingredients:

  • 4 [600 g] oranges
  • ½ cup [120 ml] water
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 or 4 pitted dates
  • 1½ cup [200 g] ice cubes

Directions

  • Repeat Step #1, #2, #3 from the Recipe 1 above
  • Place your oranges, dates, and ice cubes in the blending jug
  • Add water and the vanilla extract in the mixture
  • Secure the lid of the blender
  • Turn the machine on
  • Blend your mixture until all the ingredients are liquefied smooth
  • Transfer the Orange Plus puree to a bowl lined with a sieving device.
  • Strain the puree very well, as with Step #10 of Recipe 1 above
  • By now you should have a fresh juice in the collector bowl
  • Finally, serve your home-made Orange Plus juice in the glasses and enjoy it!

In case you don’t have the pitted dates, you can go with two tablespoons of date paste. If not that, you can use 2 tablespoons granulated [table] sugar as an alternative.

Key Takeaway:

In either of the two orange juice recipes, you can use either a single or variable speed blender. If with the latter, you have to start your machine from low to medium speed, then to high speed. This will ensure high blending efficiency and minimize the risk of burning out the motor.

To conclude

We are positive no canned or ready-made juice can ever beat a homemade orange juice. Yes, the canned may taste nice due to the added sweeteners. But, the homemade recipe will always have a fresh taste and the various nutritional values packed in the citrus fruit.

Even so, your oranges have to be fresh if you want your juice to be fresh as well. Therefore, always choose good quality fruits, unblemished and without soft spots or mold. Moreover, don’t forget to clean your fruits before using them to avoid contaminating your beverage with the bacteria that might be on the skin.

In case you want to top your fresh juice with an expected twist, it’s not a must you use vanilla and pitted dates. You can opt for something else like carrots and lime or radish, mint, and honey.

The preparation process will remain the same, including preparing the ingredients, blending and straining. Just the flavor is what will stand out, plus the extra health benefits from the new food compounds.

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