Batching and Prep, Garnish and Presentation, Techniques and Methods
Citrus wants a press, hard vegetables want an auger, soft fruit wants a freezer, and dried fruit makes both stronger garnishes and quicker infusions.
At a glance
Citrus wants a press, hard vegetables want an auger, soft fruit wants a freezer, and dried fruit makes both stronger garnishes and quicker infusions. The article covers juicers, three ways to help juice out, and drying with an oven, a dehydrator or even a hairdryer.
Fresh juice contains volatile oils, lipids, protein, acids and sugars, and keeping the best of them is the point, even though nearly every juicing method takes a certain amount of violence. A hand citrus press, the Mexican elbow, or a heavy lever press works for citrus and for little else. Stephenson’s tip is to place citrus skin side up and push the dome through the skin, which turns the fruit inside out and gets the most juice, instead of the intuitive skin side down.
A centrifugal juicer is quick and cheap but leaves a fair amount of liquid in the pulp. A masticating juicer, which works like a mincer with a slow auger, is more expensive and slower but wastes little. Either suits produce that holds a lot of water and is reluctant to give it up, like carrot, celery and apple, and even ginger, sweet potato and nuts. Cleaning is the downside, so juice a lot at once and freeze it in ice cube trays, from which cocktails can be shaken or built without overdilution. The author recommends Omega and Champion as robust brands starting around £350.
Freeze juicing. Freezing soft fruit such as blackberries makes ice crystals rupture the cells, so after thawing the juice runs freely; repeating it helps more.
Enzymatic juicing. Pectin holds the structure of an apple together, and soaking sliced fruit in a pectinase solution softens it so juice comes out more easily.
Osmotic juicing. Sprinkle sugar on strawberries and leave them for a day, and water leaches out to even out the sugar concentration. Juice them afterwards for a sweeter juice that suits syrups and liqueurs.
Drying extends the life of an ingredient and concentrates its flavour, because the same compounds remain with less water. Dried food can be used for infusion, ground into a sherbet or kept as a garnish. A cabinet dehydrator, an oven or even a hairdryer will do. Warm-air drying works at 35 to 80 C. The warning is case-hardening, when the outside dries hard and stops the moisture inside from escaping, as happens in baking bread. Low and slow is nearly always best.
Liquids can be dried by first mixing them with icing sugar, which contains a little cornflour to thicken. Paste the mix on perforated greaseproof paper, dry it at 40 C for 12 hours, then grind the sheet into a powder for dusting drinks or for flavoured rims. The same idea works with salt for Margarita rims.
A dehydrated garnish smells stronger, looks striking and keeps for weeks in an airtight container. Because it becomes hygroscopic, it takes liquid in and out through its cracks, so a dehydrated banana slice gives a Daiquiri more flavour than a fresh one. For the same reason dried material infuses syrups, liqueurs and cordials faster and needs far less weight of product.
In the author's words
almost all juicing techniques require a not-insubstantial level of violence
Page 40
Low and slow is nearly always the best strategy for drying ingredients when complete desiccation is the goal.
Page 41-42
Where this comes from
Written for this guide from the Juicing & Drying chapter of The Curious Bartender Volume 2 by Tristan Stephenson (pages 40 to 42); the facts and the advice are the author's, the wording is ours, and the quotations are given with their pages.
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