Combine These Five Fruit Families to Make Great Juice

If you’re lucky enough to own a good juicer, and keep a well-stocked fridge, you’re missing out by only combining two or three fruits in your juices. For the best results, you want to mix a bunch of fruits with different properties.

Carolyn Cope at Serious Eats explains her theory:

I’ve found that a really good juice contains the following: something sweet, something tart, something high-yield (which produces a lot of juice for its size), something earthy, and maybe something herbaceous or spicy. Earthy flavors include root vegetables as well as greens like kale, spinach, and beet greens. With a general formula like this one, the variations are endless; but here are some of my favorite ingredients from each category.

• Sweet: apples, pears, grapes, melons, pineapples, oranges, kiwis, mangoes, berries, grapes


• Tart: lemons, limes


• Roots: beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips


• Greens: Kale, spinach, lettuce, chard, arugula, mustard greens, beet greens, dandelion, sorrel, broccoli


• Herbs: Basil, parsley, cilantro, mint


• High-yield: Cucumbers, celery, fennel, tomatoes, melons


• Spicy: Ginger, hot peppers (use judiciously)

Obviously, this is just one person’s suggestion, but it’s worth mixing and matching various ingredients to find some complex juices that you like. Before you start though, be sure to brush up on some tips for maximizing your juice output.

Tips and Tricks for Making Juice, No Recipes Required | Serious Eats

Photo by Creativa (Shutterstock).

Combine These Five Fruit Families to Make Great Juice