Making Peanut Butter with your Juicer
I recently came to the realization that you can use your juicer for other things other than juicing.
Actually, I knew all along it could do things other than juicing. That’s what enticed me to get the Omega 8003 juicer. I was shopping for a juicer in the first place, and when I found the Omega auger juicer to be very impressive. It looked nice and had great reviews. I was still on the fence, but then I had read that it can do things like make pasta and peanut butter and grind coffee and more! At that point, I was sold.
Of course, it felt nice knowing I had those options at my disposal. However, I never got around to using them, or ever trying them out. I really only wanted a juicer to do juicing anyway, not those other features, so I just ignored them. And part of me is too lazy to want to try it out.
But, I decided, what the hell. I have a bag of peanuts lying around, why not try out the “peanut butter” capabilities? It’d be really cool to tell the people I know that I can make my own peanut butter anyway.
The juicer works by forcing produce through an enclosed space. The way it gets juice out is by having small openings that the juice can escape, but the pulp cannot. To make peanut butter, we have to homogenize it, which mashes it up, but still keep the peanut matter and the oils in the same mixture. While this sounds all complicated, it really isn’t. All this means is that we can’t let the oils escape throught holes while the peanut matter is being forced through. To do this, all you have to do is attach something called a “blank”, which simply blocks those holes.
After that, turn on the juicer and throw the peanuts in. As I waited anxiously, sure enough, a butter like substance was coming out of the end. In fact, it looked a lot like peanut butter! I found this pretty amazing, because I never knew this process would be so simple. Cleanup was a little more difficult, but not that bad. Best of all, the peanut butter was really good!
In the end, you can use an Omega juicer for peanut butter. It is very simple and very tasty too. I suggest you at least try it out if you have an auger juicer.
Making a Juicing Diet Easier on Yourself
I know it can be difficult to balance juicing into your lifestyle. I definitely had a hard time when I started. It takes some time to set up the juicer, get the produce ready to juice, and then clean up all the parts – definitely a lot more time consuming than buying juice and pouring yourself a glass. To make it as hassle free as possible, I have a few tips that can help.
First, keep your juicer out. It may be big and take up counter space, but constantly taking it out of the box and then storing it back in the closet is going to add a lot more work than needed. Leave your juicer on the counter, or if you can’t do that, make room in a bottom cabinet so all you have to do is crouch down and pick it up.
Fruits that you don’t have to cut up and prepare for the juicer also will save time. Some of my recommendations are:
- Carrots – easy to feed into your juicer and cheap at the grocery store
- Celery – same as carrots
- Cucumbers – make sure to get them thin enough so that they will fit in the feed chute
- Berries – small enough to just throw right in
- Spinach – can be easily forced down feed chute
- Apples – you will probably have to cut it up, but it makes for great juicing recipes. Apples are also very easy for juicers to handle.
Finally, when cleaning your juicer, I take the lazy way out and just rinse off the dirty parts. I do use the brush to make sure there is no food pulp caught in the juicer parts, but I don’t use detergent to clean it off every time. I will once in a while, but the important thing is that there is no food caught. Otherwise, the food can rot and cause mold and bacteria.
Enjoying a Fresh Glass of Juice Every Morning
I love the taste of apple juice. It is how I start my morning every day. It also doesn’t cost much at all at grocery stores, which makes it an easy indulgence (unlike orange juice, which costs a lot at my grocery store.)
The biggest reason I drink my juice in the morning is because it is healthy. It is has 100% of vitamin C for the day, and it is made of fruit (duh) so it has to be healthy for the body overall. That is what I always thought until I started juicing and making my own apple juicer recipes. I know now that is not quite the truth.
The problem with the apple juice I would buy is that it is heavily processed and commercialized. Even though it only contains apple juice and water, it has been severely stripped of its natural nutritional value because of the processes used to make it. The clear apple juice I used to buy is like drinking sugar water because that is all it really is.
Real apple juice you get from juicing is very delicate. Some of the nutrients in the juice will not last long because of oxidation that occurs when the juice is removed from the pulp. A lot of the other nutrients will not survive the heat treatment that takes place when apple juice is processed and packaged. In the end, all that’s left is the high sugar content.
I was really surprised to learn this when I started juicing. I had always thought I was doing the right thing by drinking juice instead of soda or coffee with milk and sugar. By sticking with my fresh fruit and vegetable juice recipes in the morning, I know I am doing the right thing.
My Omega 8003 Juicer
The juicer I use now is the Omega 8003 auger juicer. It is so fun to use.
Firstly, it will juice everything. I enjoy just watching it in action. Anything from apples to carrots to wheatgrass, it will do it. This is great because I really wanted to juice wheatgrass but couldn’t do it with the Jack Lalanne juicer. However, the feed chute is much smaller, which requires you to cut up your produce a bit beforehand (grrr). That’s probably the only downside to it.
It is a very quiet machine and spins at about 80 RPM. All there is is the humming of the motor as it does its thing. I really was happy about this, especially after the noise the Jack Lalanne juicer would make.
There are other things it can do besides juicing. It can grind coffee beans, make pasta, homogenize foods, make peanut butter, minces garlic and herbs, and so on. I have not tried all those features yet though. I did try making peanut butter once. It turned out quite good! I think I did it wrong the first time though because I made quite a mess. But it was worth it. One thing I really want to try is to use a different nuts to make almond butter and such.
The Omega 8003 auger juicer is a really great juicer. There are also the 8005 and 8006, but I opted for the cheapest one. It is about $220 (real cheap, right?) I’m not sure how improved the 8005 and 8006 are than the 8003 (they do have chrome finishes though), but if they’re at least as good as my 8003, then you can’t go wrong with any of them.
My First Juicer – Jack Lalanne Power Juicer
The first juicer I ever got was the Jack Lalanne power juicer. The one you always see on TV infomercials. As a first juicer, I was quite pleased.
The Jack Lalanne power juicer is a centrifugal juicer. It slices up your produce very finely, and then spins the strainer basket really fast so that the juice is forced through the strainer. One thing that is bad is the noise it creates. I guess I just got used to it at first, but when I got my second juicer, I realized just how loud it was.
I really like the wide fit mouth of the juicer. It makes it so easy to add produce to the juicer (unlike my new juicer that you have to cut up the produce.) Occasionally, you will still have to cut up the really big food, but for the most part, it made life so much easier with the wider feed.
For the most part, it does a decent job of making juice. It does add a little bit more pulp than most people might want, so you might want to strain it. It can have trouble getting the juice out of some produce like oranges. The pulp is wet and still juicy after running it through the juicer. You can run the pulp through the juicer again, but it’s a hassle. Some leafy vegetables like spinach can also be a problem for it.
Overall, the Jack Lalanne power juicer was good to me, but if you wanted a centrifugal juicer, I would suggest shopping around for another brand. Judging from other reviews I’ve seen on Amazon and such, it is not the best. There are plenty of other [better reviewed] centrifugal juicers for the same price.
My Juicing Lifestyle
Welcome to the ZiggyJuice juicing blog! Juicing my fruits and vegetables has really changed my lifestyle, and I would love to impart some of the knowledge I’ve gathered throughout the years.
Before I started juicing my fruits and vegetables, I wasn’t getting enough raw foods into my diet, as most of us don’t these days. I’m a junk food junkie, so rarely would I snack on fruits and veggies. I would cook most of my vegetables (if I had any for dinner), which unfortunately reduces the nutrition you get out of your produce.
I remember watching so many of those Jack Lalanne juicer commercials late at night, but I never actually considered juicing before. I wanted to change my diet, but was discouraged by the amount of work it would take to commit to a raw food diet. I wanted an easy way out. That’s when I decided to try out juicing.
Now, I realize it was the best decision ever. Juicing is fast and easy (perfect for my laziness!) There are so many possibilities for juice recipes, since you can combine literally anything that can be run through your juicer. I never liked brussel sprouts, but it is not a problem since I can mix brussel sprout juice with something like carrots.
Anyway, if you ever been intrigued by juicing, follow along to learn more.
