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Homemade Cranberry Juice: Sweet but not too sweet
Why homemade?
Homemade is everything when it comes to fruit beverages. These days you see a lot of factory-made fruit juice products lined up on grocery shelves—powdered fruit juices, canned fruit juices, sweetened fruit juices, instant fruit juice—but are these as healthy as your regular homemade unsweetened fruit juice? The answer is NO. These fruit sodas aren't as healthy as drinking a freshly-squeezed homemade fruit juice, at least not by a mile.
The same is true with homemade cranberry juice. Drinking freshly-squeezed cranberry juice everyday is healthier and does a lot of good stuff for the body. Powdered or instant cranberry juices have too much sugar in them. Fruit sodas, on the other hand, are mixed with caffeine, and you'd end up getting addicted to it and drinking more sodas. There goes your “One fruit juice a day keeps the doctor at bay” diet.
The sweet tart-like taste of cranberry juice is what sets it apart from other fruit juices. It's easy to prepare, too—shouldn't take anyone more than a couple of minutes. So why not give it a shot? Here's how:
How to make your own homemade cranberry juice
Ingredients:
1 lb fresh cranberries
5 c water
salt
3 orange slices
½ c sugar
You'll need:
a saucepan
a large funnel
1 sheet cheese cloth
Directions:
It's simple. Make sure the cranberries are fresh and haven't been sitting in the refrigerator for days.
Wash the cranberries in the sink and put them in a saucepan with water. Add a pinch of salt if you like. Throw in the orange slices as well. But you might want to put the berry and orange pulps aside for use in making homemade cranberry sauce.
Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, though this is a rough estimate. The best way to check is to wait for all the berries to burst.
You're halfway done. Pour the mixture into a sieve lined with cheese cloth to filter out the solids. Afterwards strain the juice into the saucepan, add sugar, and boil for another two to three minutes. Add more sugar if needed.
Serve chilled.
Nutritional values of unsweetened cranberry juice
Fresh cranberry juice isn't valued only for its great sweet taste, but also for the vitamins and minerals it provides.
The values refer to 100g of the food type.
| Vitamins |
Nutritional value |
| Vitamin A (IU) |
45 |
| Vitamin B6 (mg) |
0.052 |
| Riboflavin (mg) |
0.018 |
| Niacin (mg) |
0.091 |
| Thiamin (mg) |
0.009 |
| Vitamin C (mg) |
9.3 |
| Vitamin K (mg) |
5.1 |
| Vitamin E (mg) |
1.2 |
| Minerals |
Nutritional value |
| Calcium (mg) |
8 |
| Iron (mg) |
0.25 |
| Copper (mg) |
0.055 |
| Magnesium (mg) |
6 |
| Potassium (mg) |
77 |
| Phosphorus (mg) |
13 |
| Sodium (mg) |
2 |
| Selenium (microg) |
0.1 |
| Zinc (mg) |
0.1 |
| Other |
Nutritional value |
| Protein (g) |
0.39 |
| Carbohydrate (g) |
12.2 |
| Fibre (g) |
0.1 |
| Lipids (fats) (g) |
0.13 |
| Water (g) |
87.13 |
| Energy (Kcal) |
46 |
Everyone knows about cranberry and its potential health benefits. Cranberry helps you fight urinary tract infections, heart diseases, stomach diseases, certain types of cancers; cranberry juice, on the other hand, it gives you all that plus the energy to keep going about your day.
With benefits as good as these, it's hard to resist taking a sip from a cold glass of homemade cranberry juice!
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