Mixing Produce: Get More Juice Out of Your Juicer

Everyone wants to have get the most juice out of their produce — it’s pretty important to your bottom line. After all, your juice is your product and if you can produce your product BETTER, you should!

A few ways we recommend you increase your juice yield are having a sharp blade, using clean bags (learn our method here), and implementing the Dishwasher Analogy.

“The what?”

Yep. The Dishwasher Analogy. It’s our favorite way to explain one of the best ways to increase your juice yield- often by 7%. That’s about 7 pounds more from 100 pounds of produce— which means you get an extra batch of juice about every 14 batches! (We did the math!)

Like With Like

Why is it called the Dishwasher Analogy? It has to do with how the dishwasher cleans your silverware…

A typical dishwasher often uses a basket that has several compartments for the silverware. And you can load your silverware in a few different ways.

One way is to sort by like: knives with knives, spoons with spoons, forks with forks… and so on. In theory, this seems like a pretty good method. You will already have everything sorted once clean for easy putting away! (And everyone loves when the silverware unloading is easy, amiright?)

When Spooning Goes Wrong

But there is a problem with the pre-sort method of loading your dishwasher. When you put the same shape and size silverware next to each other, they don’t always get clean. Sometimes this means that the potato salad you had for lunch yesterday remains on the spoon that literally spooned the other spoon (yuck!).

Why You Still Have Potato Salad

The problem here is having all the silverware be the same shape and size in the same location. This causes the shapes to rest inside each other and closes the space between them.

And what’s a dishwasher’s job? To wash dishes of course (it’s even in the name!). But when the water sprayed around inside the machine can’t reach the potato salad in between because the spoons are “spooning”, it fails (you had one job, dishwasher).

Dishwashers Need Channels  

The dishwasher relies on the open spaces, or “channels,” between the surfaces of the silverware for the water to travel through in order to clean them. In the case of the spoons- if there’s no space, there’s no clean and you’re left with potato salad you don’t want.

The solution?

Mix up your silverware in the tray. Knives, forks and spoons all mixed up creates different shapes and sizes, preventing nesting and spooning. This opens up the channels between them and water gets through.

Ta-da! Clean spoons with no potato salad!

Juice Needs Channels Too 

You might be wondering how this relates to how you can increase your juice yield. Hint: It has to do with the shape, size and open channels here too.

When you’re shredding one type of produce, the shreds are the same size, the same shape, the same texture and the same consistency. Basically– you are creating “spoons” in your press bag. These shapes nest together and all the channels close up.  

Similar to the water and silverware in the dishwasher, the molecules of produce need space to create channels for the juice to travel through.

The best way to create channels for your cold pressed juice?

Mix your produce when you juice, starting with shredding.

It Really is That Simple to Get More Juice

Mixing your produce is the #1 way to increase your juice yield. Mixing your produce in your press bag changes the shapes and sizes. This prevents “spooning” and nesting shreds. With the variety of shredded produce shapes, the juice flows freely through the channels and right into your juice collection pan.

Steps to Increase Your Juice Yield – Literally

Start with Weighing

We recommend pre weighing batches of whole fruit and vegetables for your entire recipe. The goal is to get the whole recipe into your press bag so the batch is finished once pressed, no mixing later.

It can be a little tricky to get your press bag to the proper fill level with your entire recipe, so you may need to do some trial and error with your weighing. We ALWAYS recommend taking notes to help you find your perfect process.

Shred Like a Boss 

After you’ve weighed out your recipe, shred your produce with a sharp blade. We often recommend the Pulping Blade for mixed produce, especially when using fibrous ingredients like ginger. Be sure to shred your produce for an entire recipe, mixing them up as you add them to the shredder.

#PRO Tip: Mixing the textures of your produce while shredding also increases the quality of your shred (especially for fibrous stuff like turmeric). This gets those shreds primed for ultimate pressing into ultimate juice (the more you know)!

Fill Your Bag Smartly 

As stated above, it may take a little testing to find the right weight of produce for your whole recipe in one press bag while also filling the bag to the proper level. Overfilling your press bag is one of the leading causes of waste in cold press juicing.

We recommend filling your press bag about 3/4 full to start. Adjust the fill level as needed to control your rise. (Control your what? Learn more about rise in this article here.)

Press for Juice! 

Operate your press as usual, taking advantage of Speed Control and the Pulse Press Cycle to increase your productivity and using your tried and true notes for your perfect process!

Thank You, Dishwasher Analogy  

Now you know a fantastic way to increase your juice yield: mix your produce from the very beginning. Use what we’ve learned from the Dishwasher Analogy and create those channels!

Now, go get more juice!