Making Green Juice in a Vitamix

or The Vitamix vs Oscar 900 Juicing Challenge, as it transpired

I’ve borrowed a Vitamix for a week for a test drive. Fingers crossed I’m getting closer to buying a super-charged blender. But before I take the plunge, I want to try out both the Vitamix and the Blendtec.

>> Read more about the “Vitamix vs Blendtec” in this post written by my friend Bo Novak, the PMS Warrior.

Today I decided to make my green juice in the Vitamix, following Kate Magic’s advice. She says that it’s quicker, easier and less to wash up than making juice for a family of 4 in a juicer (“which was obviously designed by a man with all those fiddly parts”).

I used:

• nearly ½ cucumber
• 1 apple
• ¼ inch ginger
• 3 big leaves savoy cabbage
• handful baby spinach
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (left over from yesterday’s tahini recipe)

Remembering Kate’s advice, I put the wettest ingredients around the blades – which in this case, relatively speaking, is the cucumber. Then I stacked apple cut into quarters with the core left in, torn up cabbage leaves and topped with spinach, and then threw in the ginger slices and lemon juice.

How is this going to work? I asked myself. I’m new to the Vitamix so it’s an act of faith. Insert plunger, switch on, boost power, and start mashing energetically with the plunger. It’s a lot of work actually. “A lot” – that’s all relative, I’m used to using a blender that does all the work for me, no need to mash, mix, stir – not while the motor is running. It’s noisy and a bit frantic. My preference is definitely for meditation in food prep, but I suppose if you can meditate in a busy shopping mall you can meditate over a noisy blender (“if” being the operative word here…).

After a while longer than I expected, I have a green mush. Looks just like a green smoothie – it IS a green smoothie. At this stage I’m finding it hard to believe this mush is going to yield much juice. I’m wondering whether I should have used the whole cucumber to make it more liquid. But I persevere with my challenge to make juice so I prepare the nut milk bag over a jug and scrape the green pulp into the bag.

Lifting up the bag there’s a trickle of juice coming out. Kate’s advice was to hang the nut milk bag from the knob of a kitchen wall cupboard with a jug below, but I haven’t got all morning (nor does she, and that’s her point). I opt for the ‘milking’ method and squeeze the bag until the pulp is close to dry and I have – to my great surpirse – half a jug of green juice. 300ml or half a pint to be precise.

And the result? The Vitamix juice is delicious! Much smoother than juice made in my trusted Oscar 900 masticating juicer. As it’s been strained, there’s no sediment so it doesn’t need stirring. It’s the same green through and through and is almost creamy on my tongue. Yum! Thumbs up to Kate Magic for this top tip!

I’m thinking this is much more juice yield than if I’d put the same ingredients through my Oscar 900 juicer. So I decide to repeat the experiment to compare the results. So, in the name of science, I’ll be back in a moment….

Well this has been a very useful experiment. I am now aware of how much noise and pushing I have to do to make a green juice in the Oscar 900, to get the rolled up cabbage leaves and spinach down the chute. Apples have to be chopped smaller so they will fit too.

When I measure the juice I’m surprised to see it’s almost the same volume and the Vitamix juice (just under 300ml), but it’s quite a bit more frothy. The Oscar juice is almost chewy, I can feel bits of cucumber and apple pulp when I drink it and there’s a trail of sediment on the glass. I’ve drunk all the Vitamix juice so I can’t show you a picture of the two together.

There are about as many pieces of washing up for the Vitamix method as for the juicer, including the nut milk bag which is now stained green instead of brown from almond milk. It’s all draining on my oven top. It’s hard to tell how long the Vitamix juice method it took as I was pausing to take photos at different stages.  I would guess it took a little longer to make 1 glass of juice in the Vitamix, but I defer to Kate Magic’s opinion on making larger quantities.

How very interesting, I prefer the Vitamix juice! That’s the joy of experiments, when you’re being truly scientific and open to what the results show. I am genuinely surprised.

And now I’ve had double green juice for breakfast so I’m literally zinging with health!

Cheers!  Have a beautiful day with sunshine inside and out

Aradhana x

PS Kate Magic is bringing her “Raw Magic” talk to Bath on Tuesday 26 June 2012 >>

PPS if you missed the link above, read about a comparison on the Vitamix and Blendtec here >>