How to Make a Juice Concentrate

Natural fruit juice is one of the best liquids you can drink. When made from fresh fruit, juice retains most of the fruit's vitamins and nutrients. The downfall to making your own juice is that most types of fruit are not around all year long, which means your options for fruit juice diminish in the winter. The best way to get around this is to make fruit concentrate. Fruit concentrate is essentially mashed-up fruit without the water content, but with all of its flavor and most of its nutrients. The main benefits are that it takes up less space than fresh fruit juice and it can be stored for much longer. Add this to my Recipe Box.

Instructions

1

Cut the fruit into pieces about the size of a cherry or smaller.

2

Put the fruit into a saucepan and add just enough water so the fruit is barely covered. Heat the fruit and water mixture until it comes to a boil. Let the fruit boil until it is thoroughly soft.

3

Remove the saucepan from the heat once the fruit is soft. Let the fruit sit for at least 10 minutes or until cool.

4

Put the fruit in a blender and process it on high speed. The fruit should now have a thick but smooth consistency without chunks.

5

Strain the fruit in a colander. Remove all stems, seeds or skins that are left over.

6

Put the fruit mixture back into the saucepan. Add sugar or any other type of sweetener. Taste the fruit as you mix in the sweetener until it reaches your desired sweetness.

7

Heat the fruit until all of the sugar or sweetener dissolves. Let the mixture boil until no more water remains. The result should have a thick syrupy consistency.