Rus and I returned from Blenheim with hundreds of freshly picked, ripe, New Zealand oranges and grapefruit we picked at the homestead where we stayed while we were there.  There was entirely too much to eat, and we love fresh orange juice (who doesn’t!?), so we decided: “Let’s squeeze ‘em!

This Tasty Tuesday - freshly-squeezed orange juice: Delight or Disaster? Basically, this was going to taste heavenly no matter what.  The “disaster” potential lies in the amount of orange we waste, if the juice has too much pulp, seeds, etc.

Our house is not equipped with a juicer (does it seem from these posts that the house is not stocked with anything?  I assure you it’s not as bad as it seems!), so we went off in search of an inexpensive juicer.  We found one at The Warehouse, plastic (ugh), with a filter built in, for a few dollars a piece; we bought two. Upon returning, we immediately and eagerly started squeezing!

Here is what we did:

1. Rus cut the fruit around the equator.  He squeezed and handed me juicer #1.

2. I dumped the juice into a funnel, which led to a 1.5 litre bottle ready for the finished product.

3. Manually wipe the juicer of extra flesh and seeds into an additional strainer (we used a sifter and a filter bag (normally used for straining hops for beer-making).

4. Pick up juicer #2 and repeat.

5. Squeeze additional juice out of strainers.

Twenty minutes and about fifty oranges later, and we had a beautiful finished product!

The moment of truth: The juice was as delicious, sweet, and tangy as we expected - absolutely spectacular.  Thankfully, over the next few days, we were able to squeeze nearly FIVE LITRES of juice.  We can’t wait to go back to Blenheim for more fruit and do it all again!

This Tasty Tuesday was definitely a Delight!