As you know, the juicer is one of the best ways to get fruits and vegetables into your diet; it’s also one of the best ways to avoid unnecessary additives, like sugars and preservatives, that come with processed foods.
But — Let’s face it you can’t always get your hand on fresh fruit and vegetables especially when they are not in season… So buying frozen fruit is the only option.
Most juicers (including the Breville) are designed to take soft and ripe fruit and vegetables.
But, What About The Hard-To-Juice Frozen Fruit?
Sadly — it’s a no-go! Breville juicers (and all other juicers as well as far as I know) are only designed to juice fruit and vegetables.
Do not use any frozen fruit and vegetables. The only option you have with frozen fruit is to let it thaw out until it becomes soft enough to start using the juicer.
So just to be clear:
You can get the juice out of frozen fruit and you can use fruit that has been frozen in your juicer ONLY after it has been thawed out… And for best results and ultimate safety – COMPLETELY thawed out.
Why Can’t You Use Frozen Fruit In A Juicer?
The primary reason for this is that frozen fruit is much harder than fresh or canned fruit.
When a fresh piece of fruit is run through a juicer, it doesn’t have much force exerted on it because the center of the fruit is essentially liquid and its surface area is spread over a large area.
However, when you are attempting to juice frozen pieces of fruit, they are hard, meaning that they can be more difficult for your juicer to push through.
Another factor is if even your juicer can handle frozen fruit the juice will be frothier (the air in the cells expands a little as it goes from freezer to juicer) and will present a large yield of foam on top of the juice.
That foam is bitter, so you end up discarding a lot of juice… This is particularly true using centrifugal juicers since they spin at such a high speed to get some efficiency out of the lower RPMs.
So… unfortunately, it’s not possible to juice frozen fruit in a juicer… The problem is, when frozen fruit thaws, it expands in volume. This means you can’t add frozen fruit to a juicer, because it will either be too full to fit the fruit through the chute, or it will be full of small air pockets.
The end result? It will make the juice taste flat. You will need to defrost the fruit first by simply leaving it out at room temperature until thawed.
Also – the juicing process actually damages the cells in fruit, making frozen fruit unsuitable for making juice… Freezing changes the structure of the fruit cell and exposes the cell contents to air, which oxidizes the juice, making it go off sooner.
Trying To Juice Frozen Fruit Is A Waste Of Time?
I just had to add this video to demonstrate what a waste of time trying to juice frozen fruit is. This video is not very well done but it only goes for a minute or so and it so highlights what I’m talking about.
Kinda funny in many ways…
Can’t You Put Ice In A Juicer?
You can’t put ice in a juicer for the exact same reasons you can’t use frozen fruit as stated above.
Over the short term, this won’t cause any problems, but over time, placing ice in a juicer can really damage that machine… The gear table has teeth that actually extract the juice out of the plant matter, and if any grime from ice gets into those tiny crevices between the teeth, it can totally gum up your machine.
Many people believe that the ice will cool down the pulp or do something to help express juice faster. This is not true! Putting ice in a juicer will clog it up and also mess up the auger and gear system.
Although the Breville brand is a citrus juicer it is not designed to handle ice, only soft food items like oranges. If you put ice in a juicer, it will jam up the machine on its way through the chute, causing it to break. Juicing with ice can also damage your machine because it can get stuck in the gears!
If you want a nice cold refreshing juice just pour it over ice cubes… If you want crushed ice use a blender to do so, but never use your juicer.
Can You Put Frozen Fruit in a Juicer
For the most part — the answer is exactly the same as I mentioned above for the Breville Juicer. So technically… Yes, you can put frozen fruit in a juicer.
That being said — it is important to note that juicing frozen fruit can be a bit more challenging than using fresh fruit. This is because frozen fruit is harder and more difficult to break down than fresh fruit – which can put extra strain on the juicer and make it less efficient.
To successfully juice frozen fruit — it is generally best to let it thaw slightly before attempting to juice it. This will make it easier to feed the fruit into the juicer and will also help to extract more juice. You can also try cutting the frozen fruit into smaller pieces to make it easier to process.
So just as I said with the Breville… while it is possible to put frozen fruit in a juicer — it is important to be mindful of the extra strain that this can put on the machine and use caution when doing so.
In Summary:
Juicing fresh fruits and vegetables is a great way to get the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants your body needs to stay healthy… It’s also a tasty way to add variety to your diet, as well as a convenient way to get your daily serving of produce.
However, by far the best option is to juice your fruit fresh. You can juice frozen fruit AFTER you thaw it out completely however there is a lot of hassle involved and you will get mixed results and you may also lose a lot of the yield.
Leave the frozen fruits in your blender and make smoothies. If you have the capacity to do big batches of juice when in season and freeze the juice in air-tight glass containers… They will last for around 3 months without any problems.
That way you can have fresh juice all year round. Of course, you have to have space in your freezer for this to work. Breville has quite a variety of juicers to choose from.
You may be interested in reading… Can You Put Frozen Fruit In A Breville Blender? (Cold Smoothies)
Allan Wilson who in the offline world has an extensive background working in research, analyzing statistics, improving work processes, team leading, and implementing training to improve results and now thanks to more than 3 years dedicated to this site is now also a highly regarded researcher of brands.
Allan has a long history of developing brands online way back before blogging existed creating websites using HTML code in Notepad. Allan established brands in the Info Product Marketing arena such as infoproductmarketing, ebookresellerkit, reprintrightsmarketing, along with many other successful websites (and a few failures along the way). Allan has also authored numerous ebooks, owned and operated membership sites, created eLearning courses, and more.
