Fav New Toy: Steam Juicer!

The steam juicer: top is for the berries, middle
collects the juice, bottom is water.

So, we make some jelly around here.  And drink some smoothies.  So, we like fresh juice!  Previously, to make jelly, I boiled a big pot of berries in water, slopped the mixture into a jelly bag and let it drip.  Frequently, I made a mess ladling the berries into the jelly bag.  Frequently the jelly bag on its' silly little stand wanted to tip over, or over-flow.  Or I had too many berries for one jelly bag full.  In the canning blogs and such that I follow I heard more and more praises for the steam juicer; I talked to CSAers Norma and Merle who have a lot of experience with one and love theirs.  So I finally decided to invest in one.

I LOVE this thing!  Henry and Derrick picked about four ice cream pails of Nanking cherries for me last night.  In my new life with a steam juicer, after cleaning them I just poured them all into the steamer, filled the bottom with water, put it on the stove, put the over-flow tube into the storage jar and....walked away and did something else for an hour!  When the recommended time was up, I just emptied the receptacle into the jar and cleaned up!  So easy!  And good juice!

I set the over-flow tube into the storage jar,
and got quite a bit of over-flow, but I had
really stuffed the top!

I got a very good deal on amazon.com (yes that's .com not .ca) for a stainless steel 10 quart juicer.  I may eventually regret the smaller size - my four ice cream pails of Nankings just barely fit in, although their volume did go down with the steaming.  For many home canners the size may be more than enough but we're doing things on a slightly larger scale sometimes.  The included instructions were poor (and English was definitely not the author's first language....), but there is plenty of info online and in canning books on using the gizmo.  The instructions do give times for juicing veggies and herbs, which I hadn't given much thought to but I like the idea!  If you do any amount of juicing, I highly recommend one of these!