Eating Healthier in Today's World

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE PULP FROM YOUR JUICER?

That is the question we hear from many of our customers so we decided to blog about several ways of using the pulp when you are making your fresh juice.  For the non-juice makers who are not familiar with what I am talking about, the juice pulp is the leftover from the fresh juicer maker that we usually throw out, so many of us feel that it is a shame to throw out good food.   I should mention first, that not all juicer's pulp is equal.  Some extrusion style juicers, that our very convenient to use, that shoot the pulp into a basket on the back, will have more juice in their pulp.  Other types like Centrifugal style juicers or masticating-style juicers, like our new Coway JuicePresso, make almost sawdust like pulp.  This means that if you are substituting the juice pulp for the fruit or vegetables in your cookies or bread, you may want to add a little more moisture (water, juice etc.) to get the right consistency for your batter and dough, if you are using drier pulp. 

The pulp from the juicers is a great source of fibre with still some of the nutrition from the vegetables and fruits used in the juice, however the flavour is not as strong, so sometimes you may want to retain a tablespoon or two of the juice you have made, to add a little extra flavour to your pulp.

We have all kinds of  ideas to use the pulp but we are including 10 general ways or suggestions to utilize the pulp.  Please note that if you are going to make apple bread for example with the apple pulp, that you remove what you don't want in your bread (like the seeds and core) before you make your apple juice.  You may want to peel some things as well, however I prefer to leave the peel on such things as carrots, as there is more fibre in the peel as well as extra nutrition.   You can also freeze the pulp when making your fresh juice and label it so that you can add it to your favorite recipes at a latter date.  We have also dried out vegetable and fruit pulps to use as powders in recipes for soups and sauces and there is a great dinner pancake in this blog you can try with the dried vegetable pulp powder.

1.  We like to vegetable pulp in some of our breads.  We add it in with the wet ingredients or pulse it in the blender with the wet ingredients before pouring in our Bosch Universal Bowls and adding the flour etc.  We have a wonderful Vegetable Bread in the recipe section that will let you substitute 2 cups of vegetable juice pulp, instead of adding the carrots, cabbage, parsley and celery to the blender.

2. We like to add the vegetable pulp into Italian sauces that we make for spaghetti or lasagna.  The pulp will help thicken the sauce and makes the sauce adher to the pasta better when you serve it.

3.  We use the vegetable pulp to thicken some soups like this great fresh tomato soup.  The carrot pulp works the best but other vegetable pulps will have a similar result.

4.  You can make Carrots Cookies or Carrot Cake with the carrot pulp.  Again you may want to add a Tbsp. of the carrot juice for each cup of the pulp just to add back some flavour.

5.  Add fruit pulp to a fruit salad for the kids.  Take whatever fresh fruit you have and cut up into piece in a bowl, add a little sweetner like Xagave or honey, some yogurt if you like and 2 cups of fruit juice pulp.( you can use pulp with carrots in it and they usually don't know the difference)

6.  Add Vegetable pulp to cheese sauces when make pasta dishes like Mac and cheese,  or cream sauces for vegetables.  You will be able to see the flecks of the pulp in the white sauces but we think it adds to the colour of the food.

7.  Add fruit pulp like apple, to quick breads, muffins and cookies,  Any recipe that calls for diced apples, can be used.  Just replace the apples with the apple pulp and a couple of Tablespoons of the apple juice to get the proper consistency.

8. Add vegetable or fruit pulp into cream cheese to make a spread for crackers.  1 cup of pulp with one block (8 oz.) of cream chees mixed with your food processor is wonderful and our family loves it.

9. Make a RAW juicer pulp crackers.  I found this recipe for Juicer Pulp crackers in the dehydrator, on the web and was impressed with how easy it was to put together.  Our last blog on raw food recipes has some other great raw food recipes for the dehydrator.

Gena’s Juice Pulp Crackers

2 ½ cups juice pulp
½ cup ground flaxseed
½ tsp coriander
½ tsp curry
1 tbsp nama shoyu
1 tbsp lemon juice

Mix all ingredients well, by hand. (You could use a food processor, but you don’t need to.) Add water if needed; I usually find that I don’t need any (especially with cucumber and celery pulp, which is moist), but if you want the crackers to be less dense, go ahead and add ¼-1/2 cup of water to the mix. It should be malleable but still hold together.

Spread the mixture on a dehydrator tray lined with a fruit leather sheet. Spread to about 1/6-1/4 inch thickness. Score the sheet of dought lightly into cracker-sized squares, and put it in the dehydrator at 115 degrees. Dehydrate for about two hours, then gently break the crackers apart and flip them. Dehydrate another two hours or so.

At this point, check the consistency. Sometimes (if I spread them thin), they’re almost ready at this point. Sometimes they need a few hours more. Keep flipping and just let them be if you think they’re not crunchy enough—I definitely like to err on the side of crunch!

When they’re done, let them stand in the air for fifteen minutes or so, then put them in an airtight container. They should stay nice and crispy for at least a week or ten days.

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you could probably bake these at 150 or 175.

10.  Dry the vegetable pulp in your dehydrator overnight and place the brittle, dried pulp in your blender and powder.  You can do this with any kind of vegetable like sweet potatoes or beets.  Add the powder to your next pancake recipe for a great savory dinner pancake or crepe.  Here is one from the web made out of pumpkin powder.

Pumpkin Pancakes

• ½ cup Pumpkin Powder
• 2 Tbsp – ¼ cup Honey, to taste (optional)
• 5 Eggs
• ½ tsp Ground Ginger
• ½ tsp Ground Nutmeg
• ½ tsp Ground Allspice
• 1/8 tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp Ground Cloves
• ½ tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Cream of Tartar
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil or other good cooking fat for frying

HAPPY BAKING!