If you want to start eating healthier, you need to incorporate more fruits and veggies into your diet. One of the best ways to do that is by juicing. However, while fresh juice contains many vitamins and nutrients, there's always some leftover pulp. To ensure that you get the most nutrition out of your ingredients, you should reuse that pulp as much as possible.
Fortunately, we're here to help. This article will discuss the top creative ways to use your leftover fruit and veggie pulp after juicing. Not only can you reduce waste, but you'll get even healthier.
Table of Contents
A Primer on Juicing Pulp
If you're unfamiliar with the juicing process, here's a quick overview of how it works.
- First, you take a raw ingredient, like a whole fruit or vegetable (i.e., an orange).
- Second, you place the food into an electric juicer. There are three primary types - centrifugal, masticating, and triturating.
- Finally, you extract the juice from your fruits or vegetables and pour the liquid into a cup.
Juice extractors are an excellent way to get a high juice yield from all of your fresh fruit and veggies. Most people love juicing because it gives them total control over their beverage choices, and they don't have to worry about chemicals and preservatives.
That said, no matter which kind of machine you use, there will always be fresh juicer pulp leftover. While it's tempting just to toss it out, you should try to eat it whenever possible.
Which Juicers Leave the Most Pulp?
As we mentioned, there are three main kinds of electric juicers: centrifugal, masticating, and triturating. Here's a rundown of each type and how much leftover juice pulp you can expect.
- Centrifugal Juicers - This option is similar to a blender in that it uses a rotating blade to extract the juice. Since these models work so quickly, they can leave a lot of wet pulp behind. In some cases, you can squeeze the pulp to get even more juice.
- Masticating Juicers - Instead of a blade, these machines use a rotating gear. Mastication is the act of chewing, and these devices work similarly. Since these are slow, cold-pressed juicers, you get a higher juice yield and drier pulp. Masticating juicers leave more pulp than centrifugal models because they work slower.
- Triturating Juicers - These devices use two gears instead of one for the best juice yield possible. As with masticating juicers, you can get a lot of dry pulp once you're finished.
Overall, the ratio of pulp to juice yield increases as you move into high-end juicing machines. Also, since the pulp may be wet or dry depending on what you're using, you might have to adjust how you reuse the pulp afterward. We'll get into the difference later on.
Why Would You Want to Use the Pulp?
One of the primary issues with juicing is that you're removing both dietary fiber and other nutrients called polyphenols. Fiber makes up the fleshy parts of fruits and vegetables, and it helps you feel full for longer. Insoluble fiber can also help regulate internal systems like blood sugar, cholesterol, and liver function. Soluble fiber can help move waste through your digestive system faster.
Polyphenols and other antioxidants typically reside in a fruit's peel. So, removing the peel means that you don't get as many of these ingredients as you would by blending the whole thing.
Overall, using the pulp after juicing ensures that you can benefit from all of the various vitamins and nutrients inside different fruits and vegetables. While one easy way to incorporate the pulp is to toss your foods into a blender, there are plenty of other creative methods as well.
Which Fruits and Veggies Have the Most Fiber?
Since fiber is such a valuable ingredient, you will want to use as many high-fiber fruits and veggies in your diet. While all natural foods contain some fiber, these options have the most:
- Apples - 4.4 grams for a medium-sized apple
- Pears - 5.5 grams for a medium-sized pear
- Avocado - 10 grams for a full cup
- Raspberries - 8 grams per cup
- Carrots - 3.6 grams per cup
- Beets - 3.8 grams per cup
As you can see, some of the best fruits and vegetables for juicing contain quite a bit of fiber. So, figuring out how to reuse that pulp can help your body much more than drinking juice itself.
Eight Ways to Use Leftover Fruit and Veggie Pulp After Juicing
While this list isn't exhaustive, it should get your creative juices flowing (pun intended). Keep in mind the difference between sweet and savory ingredients as well. For example, while some fruit pulp can enhance homemade popsicles, it might not do well in a salty bone broth. We recommend sampling your pulp while it's still fresh so that you can get an idea of its flavor before using it.
1. Make Butter or Cheese Spread
If you make green juice, you'll have a lot of leftover leafy greens like kale and spinach. Since these green vegetables will already be pretty shredded, you can incorporate them into homemade butter easily. All you have to do is melt the butter in the microwave until it's soft, then mix the greens inside. Afterward, chill the butter until it hardens again.
You can also make a cream cheese dip with leftover green juice pulp. Since spinach dip already calls for chopped leaves, you're already one step ahead of your favorite recipe! Carrot pulp also works really well in dips as it adds a slight crunchiness.
As a bonus, you can cut out the butter and just add juice pulp to olive oil or coconut oil. Use an ice cube tray and refrigerate the oil with clumps of pulp inside. Then, you can toss the cubes into a frying pan next time you cook.
2. Make a Fortified Bone Broth
One excellent way to stay hydrated is to eat a lot of soup. Rather than buying cans of soup from the store, you can make your own with a batch of fresh bone broth as the base. All you have to do is toss some vegetable pulp into the liquid and let it steep normally.
Most of the nutrients will leach into the broth, making it healthier overall. You can also add some slightly sweet ingredients like beetroot or lemon pulp to add a bit more zest to the final product. If you want something mild that will absorb more flavor, try celery juice pulp. You may be adding celery to your soup anyway, so why not incorporate the pulp?
3. Become a Baking Pro
Have you ever made carrot cake? If so, you know that you need shredded carrot pieces for your mixture. So, if you juice carrots regularly, you can just use leftover carrot pulp instead.
Beyond carrot cake, fruit pulp can help you add sweetness to your baked goods. Add some orange pulp to your chocolate cupcakes for a light citrus flavor. You can make breakfast a little healthier with juice pulp muffins. Speaking of breakfast, adding some juicer pulp to your scrambled eggs is a winning combination as well.
That said, you want to use moist pulp for baking. If it's too dry, it could affect the final results. So, we recommend this option if you're using a centrifugal juicer since that will have the wettest pulp. However, if you're making something dry, like a juice pulp cracker, you can ignore this recommendation.
If you save your pulp for a few days, just soak it in some water for a little bit before adding it to your muffin or other baking recipes. The added benefit of using wet pulp is that you can cut down on other liquid ingredients, such as oil or eggs.
4. Enhance Your Smoothies
As we mentioned, the easiest way to include fiber and polyphenols from your fruits and veggies is to put the ingredients into a blender. However, you can just toss some old pulp into your smoothies as well. If you want to keep your pulp fresh, we recommend placing it in a mason jar with a little bit of water. That method should work for a few days, as long as you don't add too much liquid. If you do, most of the nutrients will leach out, which can defeat the purpose of reusing pulp.
5. Make Fruit Leather (aka Fruit by the Foot)
Homemade fruit leather is a healthy and tasty snack that will last for a long time. Most recipes called for mashed fruits, so using leftover pulp makes a lot of sense (and saves time). All you have to do is mix the pulp with a binding ingredient, such as agave syrup or honey. Don't use too much, as it could make the leather too sweet.
Once you've mixed the pulp and syrup, spread it out on a cookie sheet with wax paper underneath. We also recommend spraying the paper with a nonstick product so that the leather will peel off more easily.
If you have a dehydrator, that works best. However, you can dry the leather in the oven at low heat for about eight hours. Pull the mixture out when it reaches your desired consistency.
6. Cool Down With Homemade Popsicles
As the weather heats up, nothing beats an ice-cold popsicle. Instead of buying batches of sugar-loaded popsicles from the store, you can make your own with your leftover fruit pulp. Best of all, you can mix and match different ingredients to make better sweet treats than you could find in the grocery store.
The easiest way to make homemade popsicles is to whip up a batch of Kool-Aid or something similar. Pour the liquid into a popsicle mold, then toss some pulp inside. You can get creative with your mixtures, such as using lemon pulp with lime-flavored beverages. Once your popsicles are frozen, you'll get a delicious treat that's also nutritious!
In addition to popsicles, you can make juice pulp ice cream. Once you've started making your own ice cream, you'll wonder why you ever went with store-bought cartons. Here's a pro-tip: maple syrup goes really well on cinnamon-apple ice cream.
7. Make a Homemade Pesto Dip
Do you eat a lot of pasta? Pesto is an excellent addition to any pasta sauce, as it adds some richness and velvety smoothness. Fortunately, pesto is easy to make when you have a lot of smashed veggie pulp lying around. While you can't create true pesto, you can whip up a thick pesto-style dip that you can put on top of your pasta or use with chips.
The best juicing ingredients to use for a pesto dip include spinach, kale, and lemons. If you want to try a vegan version, you can use almond or oat milk pulp instead of parmesan cheese. If you haven't tried making your own almond or oat milk, it's actually pretty easy. Plus, oats have tons of dietary fiber, so it's a win-win!
8. Make Veggie Burgers
A veggie burger uses processed vegetables already, so it's not a stretch to add leftover juicer pulp to the mix. Plus, by making your own veggie burgers, you can add other healthy ingredients like chia seeds and sweet potato as a binding agent. Bon appetite!
Bottom Line: Don't Throw Your Pulp Away - Use It!
If you're tired of tossing old pulp every time you juice, you can stop wasting it. Plus, knowing that the pulp has so many extra vitamins and nutrients should inspire you to use it as much as possible. Depending on how often you juice, you may not be able to use all of your pulp every time. However, as long as you can repurpose it consistently, you're doing your body and the planet a huge favor.
Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19335713/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/22-high-fiber-foods#TOC_TITLE_HDR_2
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