Using a collection of juicing recipes for good health will ensure you get a balanced variety of fruits and vegetables in your regular diet along with the health benefits those fresh foods offer. Juicing preserves the natural vitamins and minerals found in whole, fresh foods, and it also allows you to take in greater amounts of these helpful substances than you may get by eating raw fruits or vegetables.
Getting a Juicer
Before you can make any of these recipes, you need a juicer. Juicers range in price from very affordable to very expensive, so consider how often you might use your juicer and how durable you want it to be before you make a purchase. Each juicer comes with instructions that you should read completely before operating the machine. It's not hard to juice vegetables and fruits, but you'll need to know how to use each feature of your machine.
A blender or food processor is not a good substitute for a juicer. Juicers strain out the pulp and other hard-to-digest materials from fresh fruits and vegetables, but blenders and processors don't have that feature. They're fine for making smoothies, but if you want a really smooth drink with a juice consistency and no pulpy bits, you'll have to use a juicer.
Juicing Recipes for Good Health
Rev up and break in your juicer with these juicing recipes for good health. Prepare all fruits and vegetables beforehand by rinsing or washing them thoroughly. You have the option of peeling all ingredients, but keep in mind that many healthful nutrients are located in the peels of fresh fruits and vegetables.Unless otherwise noted, the instructions for all the recipes are the same: just add the ingredients to your juicer and process them until your drink is ready.
Sweet Carrot Juice
Carrots are rich in vitamin A, calcium, phosphorus, and other helpful vitamins and minerals. Using an apple in this juice sweetens the drink but still leaves it to retain all the good properties of plain carrot juice.Ingredients
- 4 medium carrots
- 1 medium apple
Apple-Strawberry Juice
This juice has a clean, natural sweetness that comes from sugars in the ingredients. The apples provide a boost of fiber.Ingredients
- 2 medium Red Delicious apples
- 8 strawberries (with leaves removed)
- 12 raspberries
Pineapple-Clementine Juice
This sweet tropical juice is energizing and tastes so much fresher than similar bottled or boxed juices.Ingredients
- 1 thick (2-inch) slice from a full, peeled pineapple
- 3 small sweet clementines, peeled
Bone Booster
This drink is very high in calcium and contains healthy amounts of other vitamins and minerals as well. If you'd like it to taste sweeter, add a whole apple instead of a half.Ingredients
- 4 carrots
- 4 large kale leaves
- 1 T. fresh parsley
- 1/2 small red potato
- 1/2 sweet apple
Fennel Juice
The unique, somewhat sweet taste of fennel bulbs is a little like licorice. If you enjoy it, you might like this interesting fresh drink.Ingredients
- 1 fennel bulb
- 1/2 beet, greens included
- 1 1/2 sweet apples, such as Red Delicious
Cranapple Cocktail
Cranberry juice has a host of health benefits, most notably for the bladder and liver. It can help soothe yeast infections in women and may reduce the risk of prostate cancer for men.Ingredients
- 2 medium apples
- 1 1/2 c. fresh cranberries
- 2 T. fresh blueberries
