Our pineapple carrot juice recipe will help you make a nutritious drink that tastes great.
Fruit juices come in cartons and bottles nowadays, but the truest experience only comes with homemade juice. Additives, preservatives, and fillers might be safe to consume, but once in a while, you deserve the purest flavors of nature.
In today’s recipe, we’re introducing a tart-sweet combination: pineapple and carrot. They each bring a different variety of nutrients to the table, and the flavor is simply wild. The drink is perfect to make tons of and keep in the fridge for a refreshing experience any time you feel like it.
Is Pineapple Carrot Juice Healthy?
Packed with nutrients from pineapples and carrots, this drink deserves a page in your healthy cookbook. The two fruits contain high amounts of vitamin C, vitamin A, magnesium, phosphorus, and many other nutrients in trace amounts.
To give it a touch of extra sweetness, we add 20 g of granulated sugar to 4 servings. The amount (5 g per serving) is relatively moderate, considering the USDA’s suggested upper limit is 50 g per day, for a 2000-calorie diet.
Main Ingredients
Our pineapple carrot juice recipe calls for 3 mandatories and a few optionals:
The mandatories are pineapples, carrots, and lemon juice — if you’re lucky enough to get really sweet pineapples, that is. If so, no added sugar will be needed and you will still end up with a delicious treat.
Concentrated juice from pineapples and carrots is likely to be too strong, so we tend to dilute it with plain water. You can, however, tailor the drink to your liking — each of us has different tastes, after all.
Mint is an optional, lending the drink a cooling sensation and a fresh look. If it’s not your thing simply leave it out; it won’t affect the taste or the experience a great deal.
Ice is also an optional with the problem that as it melts it waters down the smoothie. To avoid this, you can chill the drink for an hour before serving instead.
How to Pick a Good Pineapple
If you want to get technical, here’s how to pick really sweet pineapples. Ripe pineapples emit a sweet floral aroma, but it’s at the bottom that the scent is emitted. Therefore, as you go pineapple shopping, lift each one and select those with the strongest scent.
How to Prepare Pineapples
Pineapples, unlike other fruits, don’t have a thin peel that you can easily remove with just a peeler. They require a knife and a cutting board.
Start by slicing away the bottom and the top, leaving behind a pineapple cylinder. Stand it upward, and remove the outer layer with vertical slices. Adjust the knife angle so that you don’t remove too much flesh.
You’ll soon see there are still plenty of dark spots on the fruit, called ‘eyes’, which require some trimming. Some would slice them off, which also removes a lot of flesh. Some would use special tools such as the pineapple eye remover or the strawberry huller.
With just a knife, you can do the job just as well. Run it along the sides of the eyes, angled towards their center, and a strip of eyes will come off. Repeat until all of the eyes are removed. This method requires good knife handling skills, but it removes less flesh and needs no additional tools.
For juicing, however, and if you don’t mind a slightly darker colored smoothie, the eyes needn’t be removed. Make sure to wash your pineapple thoroughly, and you’re set.
Storage and Freezing the Leftover
The drink can be stored in the fridge for 2 days or the freezer for up to 3 months.
For convenience, we suggest placing the drink in a large pitcher or bottle for easier pouring. For freezing, however, we encourage using small sealable bags — they make it easier to thaw and store individual servings.
Leftover pineapples (and carrots) can be placed into air-tight containers and preserved in the fridge for up to 5 days. Freezing isn’t recommended unless they’re for juicing or smoothie-making.
Pineapple Carrot Juice Recipe
This pineapple carrot juice recipe makes a tart-sweet nutritious elixir packed with flavors. It's super easy to make.
- by Tuyet Pham, Luna Regina, 2022-05-17
- prep TIME 5 mins
- total TIME 5 mins
- COURSE Beverage, Juice
- CUISINE Global
- SERVINGS servings
- CALORIES 117 kcal
INGREDIENTS
- 18 oz pineapples (cut into chunks)
- 12 oz carrots (peeled and cut into fingers or minced)
- 1 1/2 tbsp sugar (optional)
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 8 leaves mint
- 1 cup water
- 2 cups ice
INSTRUCTIONS
Run 18 oz pineapples and 12 oz carrots through the juicer.
Stir the juice with 1 cup water, sugar (no more than 1 1/2 tbsp), and 1 tsp lemon juice.
Garnish with mint and enjoy with ice.
NUTRITION
Tuyet Pham
Head Chef, Culinary Consultant
Luna Regina
Writer, Author
SaVanna Shoemaker, MS, RDN, LD
Nutrition Reviewer
- Valerie R.ItGreat drink, i didn't add sugar.
- Bailey CooksThis was great. Refreshing and nutritious juice!