Tropical Juice Fest

In most parts of Africa, we are so blessed with fruits and vegetables that juicing seems to be the most natural thing for us to do. Natural fruit juices are good healthwise because of the high concentration of nutrients, vitamins and enzymes you receive. Making my own juice allows me to avoid the colorants, added sugar, preservatives that seem to populate the supermarket shelves.

This entry will be less of a recipe and more of a general guideline. The reason is that fresh fruits are natural products with taste and sugar levels that vary depending on the time of year or even where they are cultivated. Therefore you have to follow your own taste buds in order to make your own mixtures. I often start my day with a carrot-orange cocktail with a dash of ginger. I also often make a natural hibiscus flower drink called bissap or zobo. I wrote about it a while back.

Note: I used both a juicer and a blender.

Clockwise, the juices above are:

Pineapple Juice
Color: Creamy yellow
Ingredient: Large pineapple about 1.85 kg
Water added: none
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and feed to juicer
Yield: 800 ml


Papaya Juice
Color: Deep Orange
Ingredient: A medium papaya about 1.1 kg
Water added: 300 ml
Method: Peel, remove seeds in the middle, cut into medium size pieces and put in blender until smooth
Yield: 1.25 l


Orange juice
Color: Frothy yellow
Ingredient: 10 small oranges
Water added: none
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and feed to juicer
Yield: 550 ml


Carrot Juice
Color: Light orange
Ingredient: 12 medium carrots, about 1 kg.
Water added: none
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and feed to juicer
Yield: 400 ml


Ginger Juice (not pictured)
Color: Light yellow
Ingredient: 100 g fresh ginger roots
Water added: 1.5 l
Method: Peel, cut into medium size pieces and blend.
Pour in a bowl and let it sit for 30 mns then sieve carefully with a muslin cloth (best) or regular sieve.
Yield: 1.5 l
Note: Peeling ginger is tedious but be patient and peel it cleanly. Otherwise the skin will make your juice bitter.


Mixing fruit cocktails
After all that hard work peeling, cutting, juicing, blending, now comes the fun part where I encourage you to come up with your own concoctions.
I recommend using 2 parts of the sweeter juice to 1 part of the less sweet one. I found that the following mixtures tasted good from the juices I made today:

• Ginger Pineapple
• Carrot Pineapple
• Carrot Orange Ginger
• Pineapple Orange Papaya

The iterations are many so juice away and do share any good mixtures you happen upon in your explorations. I can't wait for mango season!