It's hard to believe that this juice is dairy free, the avocado gives a delicious smooth texture, it really feels like your drinking a creamy smoothie. Apart from having a silky smooth texture, I find this just so tasty and bursting with flavor. The added ginger, lemon and lime really brings this juice to life and adds a beautiful sweetness.
There are a huge handful of health benefits that go along side this avocado and beetroot juice. Firstly beetroots, apart from having a brilliant colour, they are fantastic for your blood and great for boosting stamina and making muscles work harder, they also contains potassium, magnesium and iron as well as vitamins A, B6 and C.
Having not known much about the health benefits of avocado I went and did a little bit of reading to improve my knowledge. Apart from them having "good fat" as we call it, avocado is highly beneficial to your heart as it is a great source of monounsaturated oleic acid. Research has shown that this acid has both reduced dangerous low-density lipoprotein cholesterol while and the same time increasing the more beneficial high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
The monounsaturated fats in avocado are also beneficial for improving your skin tone. They are vital for maintaining good moisture levels in the top layer of your skin that makes it look and feel soft and healthy.
Many people would be surprised that a food high in fat and calories would be considered good for weight loss. However research has shown that monounsaturated fatty acids are more likely to be used as slow burning energy than stored as body fat.
In my "DETOX GREEN MACHINE" juice there is a list of health benefits for most of the other ingredients that are put into this delicious juice. Anyway, enough reading, and get juicing!
These were the proportions that I used to make 2 & 1/2 jars of juice. You will need:
- 1/2 cucumber
- 2-3 sticks of celery
- 2 carrots
- Half a head of broccoli
- 1 avocado
- 1 apple
- 3 beetroots
- Thumb sized piece of ginger
- 1 lemon
- Half a lime
THE METHOD
- Start by juicing half of your broccoli, then do your cucumber, this helps to 'wash' down the broccoli as it is a dryer vegetable.
- Next do the other half of your broccoli and follow with the celery. This will do the same job as the cucumber.
- Take the stone out of the avocado. This is easily done by halving it and hitting the stone with a sharp knife. The knife will get stuck in the stone and you should be able to pull it out with ease. Put the avocado halves in the juicer with the skin on.
- Juice the carrot, apple, beetroot and ginger. These can all go in to the juicer whole.
- Finish off with your lemon and lime.
- Serve in a chilled glass, or store in air tight jars and keep in the fridge or freezer.
- Drink with straw!
TIPS ON JUICING
- Always put the leafy end of the fruit/vegetable in the juicer first. This ensures that you are juicing the entire vegetable and that the leafy parts are not flown into the pulp. For example in the case of celery, always put it into the juicer head first, leaving the base till the end.
- When using salad leaves, lettuce leaves, spinach, kale, etc.. I find it easier to wrap these leafy vegetables around the more sturdy greens when putting them into the juicer (as I have mentioned above in "DETOX GREEN MACHINE").
- Store your juices in air tight containers to maximize their life span. I like to freeze a couple of mine. Then when I know I want them the next day I put them in the fridge the night before and they are deliciously chilled, and ready to drink.
- When doing a juice detox, it is also a good idea and helps you to keep on track, if you make a big batch of juice and freeze them. This prevents you from having to make smaller batches daily, and also saves you from cleaning the juicer more than you have to!
- Try to stick to a 5-1 ratio when doing your juices. 5 vegetables to 1 fruit. Additions that help preserve the juice like lemon, lime are not counted as fruit.
- Also, as I have said before, keep all your juicing ingredients together. Just throw the left over lime or apple into a zip lock bag and these will be perfect to use for your next juice.