You’ve got your blender, you’re making your smoothies and you feel good.
Or maybe you’ve bought a blender and now it’s going dusty in a cupboard, I’m not judging!
Either way, you’ve started to hear about juicing and you want to give it a try, but you don’t want to rush out and by a juicer if you don’t have to right?
Well you’re in luck because you can make fresh juice in a blender, it takes an extra step and it’s a bit of a pain but it is possible (I’ve got some cheap juicers reviewed here). Juice is effectively a smoothie with the pulp removed so you need to do the same with your blender. You need to get a cheesecloth or a nut milk bag (This is my favorite one on Amazon) and pour the blended mixture through it, squeezing out every last drop of juice. Then you just compost the pulp and drink your lovely glass of juice!
Because the difference between juicing and blending smoothies is that juicing removes the pulp leaving you just with the juice whereas a smoothie is everything mixed and left together, pulp fibre and all. Now different juices have some different needs so keep reading for my thoughts on green juice and fruit juice.
In This Article
Can You Juice Fruit In A Blender?
Yes you can!
Fruit juice is the easiest thing to make in a blender because it’s soft and blends up nicely not leaving the big lumps that greens like tough kale can leave.
If it’s citrus fruit you’re going to want to peel it before you put it in the blender, get rid of the skin by chopping it roughly off. The skin is tougher to blend and might be ok in a Vitamix or Blendtec blender but it is a weaker blender it won’t blend up properly and it’ll leave a bitter taste in your juice.
Other fruits have the rule that if you wouldn’t eat the skin then don’t put it in your juice other.
Now once you’ve peeled what needs to be peeled, and chopped up everything into rough chunks you can blend it! Then the fun part comes, because you’re going to need to push the pulpy juicy mixture through a fine mesh strainer like these I’ve reviewed which lets all the sweet delicious fruit juice out while separating the pulp.
Nut milk bags work well for this because you can properly squeeze every last drop out which makes it comparable to a juicer leaving you with very dry pulp that you can get rid of in compost, or something more creative.
Can You Make Green Juice In A Blender?
Now making green juice in a blender is a little more tricky, purely because greens tend to be harder to blend, kale stalks being the worst for this, but it’s still possible. I’ve talked about the best blenders for green smoothies before, and green juice follows these with the difference that you strain out the pulp after.
You need a good blender to do this effectively, cheap blenders can be OK but they tend to produce more waste because the blender doesn’t completely mince everything and you can big chunks left, and chunks still have the juice in them so they’re not what we’re looking for.
But, if you’ve got a decent quality blender or your happy having the chunks then the same rules apply, you just want to blend it all up then strain out the pulp. Easy peasy!
Juicers are faster, even slow juicers ironically, but like I said if you’re wanting to try out a green juice then go ahead with your blender.
You should know that you need to peel ginger before you juice it as well, again you might be able to blend it up if you’ve got a powerful enough blender but it’ll have an easier time if you just give it a rough peel first. I mention this because there are few juices I make at home that don’t have juice in them.
Pro tip: For your first green juices (I’ve got some green juice recipes here) you’re wanting to keep it sweet, so throw in an extra green apple and maybe a chunk of fresh ginger to spice things up so you can get used to the taste of all the greens. You learn to love it.
What Type Of Blender Do You Need For Juice?
A powerful one.
Ideally you want a Vitamix, Blendtec or an equally high powered blender so you can properly blend your green veggies, but certainly you’re going to want a jug blender like those compared to a personal blender like a Nutribullet.
More specifically you’ll want to get a high speed blender that’s about 1400 watts or more in terms of power. That’s more than enough to tear through anything you’re going to put in it, will it blend right?
The jug blenders are more powerful and have more blending capacity so you can make enough to get a good glass of fresh juice. Otherwise, you’ll fill up a regular blender container and get left with an even smaller glass of juice, less still if it isn’t powerful enough to cut up those tough carrots or kale stalks.
Other than that, you might want to consider a glass jar blender, it’s not strictly necessary to making the juice but I’m a big believer in doing what you can for the environment so any way to use less plastic is going to be a winner. Just be careful not to drop it!
You’ll also need something like a fine mesh sieve to seperate out the juice from the pulp. oR you can keep it as a smoothie and enjoy all the fiber.
Avantages Of A Juicer
I’ve talked more about the differences and advantages of each in this article but I want to give you some of my favourite reasons for having both and using a juicer for juice and a blender for smoothies.
Less Steps to Juice – This is a big one for me personally, I don’t like having to separate the pulp from the juice manually, pouring everything through the strainer is a pain in the backside. It might not be for most people but it would be enough for me to not be bothered and decide not to.
More Juice – From the same amount of ingredients you start with if you use a juicer, and preferably a good one, you’ll get much more juice at the end if you use a juicer compared to a blender. Ginger juice for instance, you’ll need a lot of fresh ginger in a blender to get a ginger shot compared to a juicer.
Juice Lasts Longer – Even orange juice lasts longer when it’s made properly in a masticating juicer, it’ll stay fresh for 2-3 days compared to out of a blender when you’ll get about 24 hours of prime juice time before you start to lose some of the nutrition and the juice starts to spoil.
But, Blenders are easier to clean because they’ve got fewer parts. I’ve gotten used to cleaning my juicer so it doesn’t feel like very long but I know some people like to have an absolute minimum of clean up time. Juicer juice also has a thinner consistancy compared to strained juice made in a blender. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you.
Conclusion
Whether you want fruit juice or vegetable juice, blender green juice is possible, it takes a little more work compared to a using a juicer but you can make juice. Tha’s you ready to start juicing, whether you just want more nutrients in you diet or you looking to lose weight, but, making a green smoothie might be easier.
Just find your favourite recipe, I’ve got some carrot juice recipes for inspiration here, and then prep the ingredients as required, then after that you just blitz everything together and strain it through a sieve, a fine-mesh strainer or a nut milk bag to separate the juice from the pulp.
I love my juicer and couldn’t imagine using my blender to make juice, that extra step of hassle is too much for me, but this is about you so I want you to know that you can use your blender for making juice.
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