Carrot is simply a power food. It’s packed with so many vitamins and nutrients that can keep your body in top shape.
Unfortunately, eating it every day, whether raw or cooked, can bore your taste buds and that can easily discourage you from consuming it regularly.
That is where this handy guide on how to make carrot juice can help you. This guide is full of essential tips and tricks you can actually use in creating your homemade carrot juice.
But before we get to the actual recipes, here are a few good reasons why you need to add a carrot juice recipe into your daily diet.
5 Amazing Benefits of Carrot Juice
We all know that carrots offer so many health benefits, but do you know exactly what those benefits are?
Here are some of them:
1. Increases Metabolism
Believe it or not, drinking carrot juice can aid in weight loss. One way it contributes to shedding a few pounds involves its effect on bile secretion.
By increasing bile, it increases the rate at which your body converts food into energy.
Additionally, by replacing your usual sodas and carbonated drinks with glasses of carrot juice, you’ll be able to reach your ideal weight faster.
2. Improves Vision
Carrot juice makes an excellent source of beta-carotene. It’s a type of vitamin A known to possess really powerful antioxidant properties.
Vitamin A has this unique ability to help protect the eyes’ surface which helps in strengthening vision.
Carrot juice can also prevent the development of specific eye disorders, like cataracts, blindness and even macular degeneration.
3. Better Skin
Carrots also have a great amount of vitamin C which possess great healing properties. Consuming it daily should help your skin heal traumas and wound faster. The beta-carotene in carrots also lessens skin inflammation and makes healing faster.
4. Stronger Brain Function
Beta-carotene can help strengthen brain function and improve memory by preventing oxidative stress. This type of stress is largely responsible for brain cell damage, weakening of nerve signaling and reduction of cognitive function.
5. Increased Resistance To Diseases
Containing antioxidants, carrots can help fight cell damage, free radicals and inflammation in your body. Those things are huge factors to diseased development.
Now that we got those things out of the way, here are the top 3 homemade carrot juice recipes you should try out:
How To Make A Carrot Juice With A Juicer
If you have a juicer in your kitchen, this recipe should be easy for you.
This recipe has this surprising sweetness and mildness you’ll definitely love. It’s a great drink to enjoy when you’re having a really bad flu.
Apart from the natural immune boosting property of carrots, the addition of turmeric, garlic and onion makes the drink a lot more powerful in killing bacteria and viruses.
Parsnip, on the other hand, is great in fighting off flu and cold germs.
All you need is to prepare the following ingredients:
- Handful of ice
- 2 large carrots cut in halves
- 1 garlic clove
- 1/2 small onion cut in half
- 1 orange, peeled and then cut in half
- 1 parsnip cut in half
- A pinch of turmeric
- 1/2 cup cold water
- A pinch of black pepper
To do:
- Start off by washing your fruits and vegetables.
- Place your parsnip, onion, carrots, garlic and orange into your juicer.
- Add the black pepper, turmeric and water.
- Pour over ice and drink!
Source: https://www.healthambition.com/creative-carrot-juice-recipes/
How To Make A Carrot Juice With A Blender
Not having a juicer shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a glass of homemade carrot juice. Although the processing of creating one with a blender can mean additional steps, the end result is going to be worth all the hard work.
1. Simple Carrot Juice Recipe
To begin with this basic carrot juice recipe, you need to determine first how much juice you’re planning on creating. Typically, 2 to 3 pieces of carrots are enough to fill a decent sized glass.
To do:
- Begin by washing your carrots. Then, chop them into smaller pieces. You don’t necessarily have to chop them into really fine pieces but the size should be small enough to decrease the workload of your blender.
- Add them to your blender. You can use any type you want or whatever is available in your kitchen.
- Add filtered water into the blender. If you’ll be adding watery vegetables, you can skip this step. However, if you like your juice to be a bit diluted, add more water. It should be enough to get all the ingredients inside your blender moving.
- Start by blending on medium until the ingredients are thoroughly pulverized.
- Once you have the right consistency, get a nut milk bag and place it over your container. Gently and carefully pour the blended ingredients.
- Grab the bag and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. If you have other recipes in mind, you can save the pulp.
- Drink and enjoy your juice.
Source: https://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2015/11/how-to-make-carrot-juice-with-a-blender.htm
2. Carrot Juice With Orange For Weight Loss
If you want to take your weight loss routine up a notch, then this juice can surely do the trick.
For this, you need to prepare the following:
- 1 bunch of parsley
- 1 cup of water
- 2 oranges
- 2 carrots
To do:
- Start by removing the leaves from the stems of the parsley.
- Next, chop the carrots into smaller pieces.
- Cut the oranges in half and extract the juice.
- Place the parsley and carrot inside the blender and add the orange juice and water.
- Blend the ingredients for a few minutes or until you see everything is well mixed.
- Serve with some ice cubes.
Preparing this recipe is really easy, but is it effective?
As mentioned, carrots can contribute to weight loss and adding oranges and parsley to it can maximize that property.
Oranges can also boost your immune system and provide important antioxidants to the body so you can enjoy better cardiovascular health and healthier skin.
Source: https://steptohealth.com/carrot-orange-and-parsley-juice-for-weight-loss/
Common Juicing Mistakes With Carrot Juice
While making a homemade carrot juice is really easy and simple, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make mistakes along the way.
To give you a clearer idea, here are some of the most common juicing errors and what you can do to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Not Drinking The Juice Immediately After Preparation
To get the most out of your juice, you need to drink it as soon as you’re done creating it. If you allow it to get exposed to the air, its nutrients, enzymes and all the good stuff in it will just oxidize. This can greatly reduce the nutrients you can get from the juice.
As much as possible, drink the juice within 15 minutes after preparation. If you really can’t do that, store the juice in an airtight container and place it inside a cooler. This will keep it fresh while you still can’t drink it.
Mistake #2: Not Cleaning Your Blender Or Juicer
Make it a habit to clean your appliance right after using it. This is to avoid staining and accumulation of pulp inside.
If you can’t clean it immediately, soak the container and the blades in water to prevent the pulp from drying up and staining the parts inside your appliances.
Mistake #3: Not Washing The Ingredients Thoroughly
This is a very important step you shouldn’t miss. You see, even though you’re using fresh fruits and vegetables, it doesn’t mean that they are completely safe.
Some of them are conventionally grown with pesticides that can do more harm than good to your body. Washing also helps eliminate parasites.
Mistake #4: Drinking It On A Full Stomach
Fresh carrot juices are best taken on an empty stomach to ensure maximum absorption. You can drink it 10 to 20 minutes before a meal.
Conclusion
Learning how to make a carrot juice is easy and you should be able to create one at home with the recipes above. Take note, however, that while it’s easy to make, you shouldn’t drink it for a long period of time.
Also, it’s important that you know what to expect from the juice. While it offers so many health benefits, it doesn’t mean that it’s a miracle worker. It can’t magically cure diseases or absolutely prevent health issues from happening.
You also have to really listen to your body. If you are going on a juice fast, it’s critical that you pay close attention to what your body is saying.
People have different resistance and response to juice fasting so stop as soon as you feel that something’s not right with your body. Forcing yourself to continue with the fast can only cause more problems.