We ordered our Jack Lalanne Power Juicer through Amazon and it came with a book titled, “Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer: Recipes for Healthy Living”. I’m not sure whether this book comes with the juicer when you order it during the infomercial, so I thought I’d share some of the tips that are included in the books. This list is not all-inclusive; I’ve just included the tips that I’ve found helpful thus far.
1. Wash all fruits and vegetables before juicing: This one is easy to forget since you can put most fruits and vegetables into the juicer without any prep work. But washing your produce will help prevent dangerous bacteria and chemicals from getting nto your body.
2. Remove all stems: This seems to contradict the infomercial in which they feed entire bunches of grapes into the Power Juicer without removing the grapes from the step. Perhaps that is an exception. I think that it is probably wise to remove the stems in order to prolong the life of the blades and motor.
3. Do not try to juice bananas or avocadoes. Bananas and avocadoes do not have any juice – they will just clog up the machine. If you want to make a smoothie, add the banana to the fruit juices in a blender. Other “no-nos” include coconut, eggplant, leek, rhubarb and winter squash.
4. Put a plastic grocery sack in the pulp collector. The pulp collector is much easier to clean if you can just remove the bag and throw the pulp away. I like to tie the bag up before I put it in the trash can so that animals and insects are not attracted to it. However, if you’re planning on using the pulp in other recipes, I would skip the bag or use a zip-top bag so that you can be sure that the pulp is clean.
5. When using leafy greens, roll the leaves into a ball before juicing. Greens do not contain a ton of juice, so getting them into a compact form before they go into the Power Juicer improves the efficiency of the process.
6. Alternate soft and hard produce. For the best results, always follow a soft item, like peaches or mangos, with hard produce like a carrot. The soft produce tends to create a thick juice and it sometimes needs the harder produce (and the resulting thin juice) to help it come out of the machine.
7. Peel citrus fruits before juicing. Citrus fruit peels are very bitter. You don’t want that stuff in your juice. You do not,however, have to remove the thin, white membrane that separates the individual segments of fruit. That membrane is called the pith and it is perfectly okay to eat/drink.