As I’ve mentioned before, as hard as a try, sometimes I fall short of eating the recommended daily amount of fruit and veg. Not any more. My newest healthy habit is to make myself a daily juice using my shiny new Philips HR1871 Avance Juicer which the lovely people at Debenhams recently sent me to try out.
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To be honest I’m always a little wary of bringing a new piece of kit into my kitchen. After the initial excitement wears off, all too often whatever it is gets relegated to the back of a cupboard and is never seen again (yes enormous panini press currently taking up the best part of a shelf, I’m thinking of you). However, over a month in and I’m still using the juicer every day.
I’m definitely feeling the benefits of a daily juice but I don’t think it would have become a daily habit if the juicer wasn’t so easy to use. You put the six component parts one on top of another, following the simple diagram in the instruction booklet. Unless you have an epic specimen of village-fete-winning proportions you don’t even need to chop up most fruit and vegetables before you juice them. In my excitement to start juicing I’d only skim read the instructions and had missed this important one, which is why you can see the results of furious chopping session in the pictures above. The only preparation you need to put in is to give your fruit and vegetables a wash and remove stones and any skin that you wouldn’t eat (think oranges, pineapples, kiwis and so on).
Fruit and veg washed, stones and skin removed, you put your chosen combination of fruit and vegetables into feeding tube, select one of two speeds depending on whether you’re juicing hard fruits and vegetables (things like carrots and apples) or soft fruits (for example kiwis and cucumbers). Then you press down with the pusher, having remembered to put the jug underneath the spout. I should also add that it’s crucial to put the lid on the jug. The one time I didn’t I was juicing beetroot and it ended up all over the kitchen worktop. It looked like a terrible accident had occurred.
The one thing that had always put me off buying a juicer was the cleaning. Everyone who owns a juicer seems to moan about it. I don’t have anything to compare it to but I’ve found the Avance quick and easy to take apart and clean. All the removable parts are dishwasher safe.
I’ve been experimenting with various combinations of fruit and vegetables. The brilliant thing I’ve found is that it’s a great way to get vegetables that are really good for you, but that you don’t particularly like, into your diet. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the aforementioned beetroot but, juiced, along with apples, carrots and ginger, I’m a convert.
What’s your favourite juice combination? Do share in the comments section below!
You can buy the Philips HR1871 Avance Juicer at Debenhams here
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{Top Tips For Juicing}
Find balance
Add sweetness to a veg-heavy juice with apple, pears or pineapple.Add ginger
My favourite ingredient is ginger which, in addition to adding flavour, has brilliant immune-boosting benefits and helps ease headaches, sleepiness, indigestion, stomach upsets and nausea.Don’t hang about
Drink your juice straight away, it loses taste and nutritional value over time.Change things up
If you’re stuck in a recipe rut take inspiration from juice bar menus. I’ve been recreating Moon Juice combos (my favourite juice stop when I was on holiday in California last year).
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Oh I wish Debenhams would send me kitchen gadgets – I’d like a KitchenAid mixer pretty please! 🙂
Great review, I’d definitely like to give juicing a go – maybe I’ll put a juicer on my Christmas list.
Haha, I did feel very spoilt when it arrived Kitty! KitchenAid mixers are lovely looking but, despite being a huge fan of GBBO, I’m not much of a baker so I’m not sure I’d get much use out of one…
Ach, I’m so on the fence about juicers. On the one hand, I LOVE juice!!! On the other, when you juice your fruit and veg you still get all the sugar (and yes, vitamins) but without any of the fibre, plus the sugar is more readily released. It also only counts as one of your five a day no matter how many veg you put in or glasses of juice you drink.
It worries me slightly that they’re sold as the magic bullet to a healthier diet when really (like everything else) they’re just one part of it.
You’re right Claire, juices should only be a part of a healthy diet, as Lorna Jane Clarkson says in her book More Of The Fit Woman’s Secrets a good rule of thumb is never to juice more fruit or vegetables than you would eat in one sitting, or the sugar content is WAY too high.
Beetroot, carrot and ginger is a big fave in our house – its definately the first thing we reach for on a tired morning when extra energy is required. I’ve spent many hours trying to justify my sage juicer after reading about the health hazards of juicing… so I can recommend googling recipes for breakfast muffins and nice healthy ways to use up the fibre that get collected in the juicer waste. That way you’re still using the whole fruit/veg. (Only dont use kale thats a bit off and been sitting there a bit too long… the gross kale muffins didn’t go down too well…)
Also… adding cinnamon slows down the release of the sugars into your body so thats a handy little extra way to help a bit against that old problem!
I’ve been wondering what to do with all the pulp that gets left behind Amanda, breakfast muffins sounds like the perfect answer! Love the taste of cinnamon and it works well with apple, will definitely be adding to my juices from now on.