Living in my small apartment, I DID NOT have room to store a giant juicer in my cabinets. I also didn’t want to set it all up, prep the vegetables, and then spend an hour cleaning it afterward. I’m a busy college student and I just never had the time or energy for that.
But living in Austin where it’s super trendy to buy fresh juices, especially in the summer when it gets really, really hot, I wanted to be able to make my own without paying $5 or $6 every time!
To be completely honest, I actually started doing this when the celery juice craze was making its way across the internet, and it worked! I had fresh celery juice every morning and I felt like such a put-together college student!
My simple method definitely gets the job done, and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than buying it from health food shops around here or investing in a big, clunky juicer, especially if you don’t do this very often.
Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually pretty simple too! It's really only a TWO STEP PROCESS! AND this is actually the same method you would use if you wanted to make almond milk!
I used my blender, cheesecloth, and a container big enough to hold all of the juice without it spilling all over the place. (You’ll see what I mean in a second)
Step 1
The first thing you do is blitz all of your ingredients together in the blender. Try and get everything as smooth as possible.
Step 2
The second part that actually makes the taste and texture resemble a real juice is straining the mixture through the cheesecloth. This is the way to get the juice separated from the fibrous parts of the vegetable.
Helpful Tips & How to Do This WITHOUT Making a Mess
This can be a little tricky if you’re doing it by yourself so what I recommend is pinning the cheesecloth to the edges of the container so that it doesn’t fall when you start pouring in the mixture.
It also helps if the bowl or container is really deep so that you have enough room to pour everything in without the cloth sitting on the bottom of the container.
It shouldn’t be pinned tight. You want to leave a lot of fabric in the middle to catch the liquid. If it were pinned tight, the mixture would spill all over the counter as you pour it over.
Once everything is set up correctly, pour all of the mixture into the cheesecloth. Grab the edges of the fabric and unpin it from the bowl or container so that you can tie it together at the top.
Then using your hands, gently squeeze the cheesecloth to strain the liquid into the container. Be careful to not put a hole in the bag you created because if everything starts coming out of the cloth you won't get a smooth end result.
Do this until almost all of the liquid is gone from the cheesecloth and the only thing left is the fiber from the vegetables.
It should look like your wringing out a towel by the end, and what’s left inside the bag should look similar to dried crumbly grass. Weird, I know lol but it works.
That’s it! You can just throw away the fiber or use it to make other things like vegetable stock and soups.
The only thing left to do is store your juice in the fridge or serve it right away. I usually wait a little bit to let it get cold in the fridge, but it’s totally personal preference!
If you want to see another example where I used this method, I'll be posting a new Beet Vegetable Juice recipe soon!
I would love to see you try this out! Tag me on Instagram @nicolebolar.blog if you give this a try!
Stay safe and healthy!
– Nicole