Steamy goodness

Got some fruit that’s not it’s best but don’t want to throw it out?

Steam juice it!

I’ve got some grapes that have a little mold (who am I kidding – heaps of mold). A few are a bit soft, some are a bit dry but I can use them all to make a delicious, pre-sterilized, grape juice. I could even use that and make some great vinegar. I’ll skip the obvious wine stage as I don’t drink anymore.

The steam juicing unit has a lid, a colander, a middle piece with an cone to allow steam up but catch the juice. This piece has a catchment area and a tap. Below that is a pot.

All you’ve got to do is remove the bugs from the fruit, half fill the colander, fill the bottom with water and then place the rest on top of that. Boil the water by your preferred energy method and let it rock!

The principle is simple, the steam bursts the cell walls of the fruit, allowing the juicy goodies within to flow out. These collect and drip down into the catchment area from where you tap it off into your container of choice.

The unit comes with a hose that fits on the tap and allows you to pour juice straight into bottles that are positionediwer than the unit. I used a bowl for the pics to show the beautiful colour of the juice.

The juice comes out near boiling and the whole lot has been sterilized already, so you just have to sterilize your bottles if you want to preserve it.

If you want stronger juice, you only need to tap off some of the good stuff and pour it back over the fruit in the top while things are still steaming.

We use the steam juicing process often to help us use fruit that would often be assigned to the categories of ‘vinegar’ or ‘chook/worm food’. We don’t have an active compost bin or there’d be a category for that too. That all gets a little more efficiency out of the garden.

So far, We use it successfully every year on Grapes, Peaches, Plums and Nectarines. It extracts a beautiful golden juice from Prickly Pear as well. You don’t need to worry about those little prickles either!