Healthy Diet Base Better choice for better life!
Juicing is not exactly rocket science. You can combine, concoct and mix various combinations of fruits and veggies and discover new flavors on your own. But some combinations are more pleasant than others. To guarantee a delicious, nutritious mix every time, we’ve listed down tips and tricks for creating healthy, tasty juices:
Getting to Know Flavors
Fruits and vegetables present an endless array of flavors and textures. A good juice should have balanced tartness, sweetness, earthiness and maybe a little bit of spiciness thrown in. And you don’t achieve a perfectly balanced juice by going willy-nilly on your choice of ingredients.
We recommend acquainting yourself with various fruits and veggies and their corresponding flavors. For example, citrus fruits are often used to add tartness while mangoes, berries, and melons add sweetness to any drink. Dark green vegetables – like kale, arugula, and broccoli – add an earthy, herbaceous flavor to the drink while hot peppers, ginger and cinnamon add heat and spice to your juice. Fruits and vegetables with high water content – such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and watermelons – yield more juice.
Developing Your Signature Mix
How do you start creating your own mix? Imagine fresh fruits and veggie combos that you like to eat together, it’s that simple. From there, you can tweak the juice to add sweetness or tartness. Don’t be afraid to experiment when developing your own juice mix.
Balancing Juice and Potency
Some types of spice and high juice fruits and vegetables can alter the taste of your drink. And if you want a tasty mix, you need to learn how to achieve the right balance of flavors. For instance, ginger is high in antioxidants and vitamins but a little goes a long way. Too much of the stuff could ruin the overall flavor of your drink. The same thing goes for spices, you don’t want to go overboard otherwise, you won’t get the result you want. Cucumbers and tomatoes make a great juice ingredient, but they taste rather bland. You can add a little sweetness to highlight the subtle flavors of these ingredients. Adjust according to your own taste.
Keep the Peels On!
A quick way to boost the nutritional value of your juice is to keep the skin of the ingredients. Carrots, apples, grapes, cucumber, even banana, all these fruits, and vegetables are more nutritious when eaten with their peels on! However, kiwis and citrus fruits should be juiced without the skin on. Kiwis have fuzzy peels while citrus have very bitter peels.
Experimenting with Greens
One way to add earthiness to a juice is to add green, leafy vegetables. Now, green leafy vegetables have various flavors: neutral, earthy and peppery. Lettuce imparts a subtle, neutral flavor to the juice while chard and kale bring an earthiness to the drink. Mustard, arugula, and dandelion add a peppery flavor to the juice. You can mix and match these green veggies according to your own preference. The key here is to find a balance between fresh fruits and veggies, developing a harmonious blend of flavors that appeal to your taste buds.