Juicing For Beginners | Benefits, Tips & Juice Recipes | Juicing 101

Hey everyone, my name's Ali and welcome or welcome back to my channel, Mindful Living. Okay, so today's video is a fun one. I'm going to be sharing my love of juicing with you guys. I'm so excited to take you guys along on my juicing journey today. I'm going to be sharing a few of the health benefits of juicing, a few different juicing tips, along with my favorite juice recipes. I'm finally getting back into the habit of juicing again regularly, so I thought I would go ahead and share some of that with you guys today. I've shared a few juicing videos on my channel in the past. If you missed those, make sure to go back and give them a watch as well. Okay, to get started, I'm going to go ahead with the basics here, Juicing 101. So what exactly is juicing and why should you juice your fruits and vegetables? So juicing is quite literally drinking your nutrients. Unlike grocery store juices, which contain a lot of added sugars and artificial flavors, juice extracted from real fruits and vegetables gives you healthy and delicious juices that are actually good for you. Juicing has shown to have a lot of different health benefits, and it's great for anyone who gardens and grows their own produce as well. In the spring and summer, nothing is better or fresher than juicing your very own fruits and vegetables that you have been growing yourself. Homemade juices are loaded with tons of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory properties. Juicing is also known to help with skin complexion and hair, weight loss, it can improve digestion and gut health, increases your energy and mental clarity, can reduce joint pain, and improve your overall immune system. Because you're going to need a lot of fruit and vegetable to juice, juicing is known to be a little more expensive. However, I do think it can be done on a budget. You just need to shop your fruit and vegetables on sale and in season. I recommend you always buy your fruit and veggies in bulk. For example, I purchased this big bag of oranges for only $2.99 on sale, and I can use this in a variety of different juices throughout the week. You also want to make sure that the produce you're using is fresh, in season is best of course, and use organic produce if you can. Okay, let's get started with today's first juice. I'll be using my Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juicer for all of my recipes today. I purchased this off Amazon, it's very reasonably priced for a juicer, and I've had no complaints with it. Okay, so one of the first juices I wanted to try when I got my juicer was a really simple and easy recipe, which is homemade orange juice. Real orange juice is really different from what you get in the grocery store, and it's so delicious, I promise you it's worth the time you're going to spend peeling those oranges. Okay, so this recipe is going to be using six oranges. You want to make sure you peel all of your oranges, and I've just cut mine in half. These are fairly small oranges, if you have larger size you can probably get away with using four or five. I also like to chill my oranges in the fridge if I'm going to drink this fresh, because I do want my juice to be cold. The orange juice will come out kind of frothy at first, but that will settle as the drink sits. Also make sure to give all your juices a good shake before you enjoy them. You can make your juices ahead of time, and then store them in the refrigerator for up to 72 hours. Just make sure to keep them in an airtight container. I like using a mason jar to do that, but I also encourage you to enjoy your juices fresh. They really do taste better when they are fresh. The longer you store them in the fridge, the more you will lose enzymes and other essential nutrients from the juice. Make sure to fill your juice to the top, or as close to the top of your container as possible, as less oxygen in the container means you are less likely to have your juice oxidized, and it will stay fresh longer this way. Okay, moving on to green juice. So once you're more comfortable with your juicer, you can go ahead and start to play around with different flavours. Green juice is a great way to start, and there's tons of different ways to make it. I'm going to be sharing one of my favourite ways to make green juice, so let's go ahead and start with the recipe. You always want to start with a base for your green juice that has a high water content. So something such as cucumber, celery, oranges, etc. I'm going to be using cucumber for my recipe today. From there, you want to add in some sweetness to your juice. So you can sweeten it with things like apples, kiwis, grapes, pineapple, watermelon. This will give your juice a natural sweetness, and blends the flavours together nicely. I'll be using apple and kiwi to sweeten my green juice today. From there, you can add in a detox element such as ginger, lemon, or different herbs. I'm going to be using lemon in this recipe, but ginger would also be really great too. Lastly, you can add in any other fruits and vegetables that you like. I'll be adding in a green and red apple, some lettuce, and some spinach. Again, the green juice is going to settle as it sits. You can enjoy this fresh over some ice, or keep it in your fridge. I like to chill mine for a couple hours as it really does blend all the flavours together nicely. Okay, and the last juice recipe I'm going to show you guys today is an orange carrot ginger juice. Go ahead and turn your juicer on, and I like to get started with the oranges as my base. So this one was a little different for me, but I really did enjoy the flavour of this. It's one of my favourites. You only need a few ingredients to make this juice, which makes it really cost effective and easy. All I'm using here is three oranges, two carrots, and a small piece of ginger. Keep in mind, ginger is a little bit spicy, so if you don't like a strong flavour like that, you may want to put in only half this amount. And lastly, I'll be adding in two large carrots. It's interesting because you can't really taste the carrots in this juice. You definitely get a more strong taste of the ginger and the oranges. It's different and super refreshing. Definitely has a little zing to it, so I highly recommend you give this juice a try. Well, that's it for this video today. I do have a few other juicing videos where I show you guys how to make your own homemade V8 juice. I also have another recipe showing a different take on a green juice, along with an immunity boosting juice where I juiced papaya and grapefruit, along with oranges and lemon. Make sure to go and check those out on my channel as well. If you enjoyed this video today, I hope you will hit the like button, leave me a comment down below, and make sure to hit the subscribe button. It really does help to support me and my channel. Thank you guys so much for watching. See you in my next one.