Homemade Vegetable Juice

Remember the post I did about the food strainer I got? That it burned my hand, and caused all this nonsense trouble? Well after making some adjustments and oiling it up pretty well I got it to work properly!YAY! It still got hot, the entire metal body gets hot, so I put a towel around the part I touched once in awhile, other than getting extremely hot (still not sure why it does that) it worked perfectly.

I made several batches of some Tomato Sauce, loads of it, my cupboard is full! I also was able to try out a new recipe for some Vegetable Juice! Perfect for the end of the summer garden if your overloading with vegetables and not sure what to do with them.

Vegetable Juice!

Ingredients
15lbs tomatoes cut into chunks
4 onions diced (cut as small as possible)
4 green bell peppers seeded and diced
6 large jalapenos diced
6 small potatoes peeled and diced
4 carrots peeled and diced
3 stalks celery chopped
3 cucumber slided
2-3 teaspoons garlic powder (or minced up garlic your choice)
Salt
Hot sauce to taste if wanted or just plain pepper
Food Strainer
**If Canning, you need to sterilize your jars and lids. Prepare a water bath for processing.
 You’ll need either lemon juice or citric acid and your canning equipment**
Directions

Combine all the ingredients except salt in a large stainless steel pot (3-4 gallons) over med-high heat. Cook about 30-40 minutes or until potatoes are soft and the tomatoes have cooked down. This is going to go through a Food Strainer, so you work in small batches. Strain the entire batch through the strainer (which gets the seeds, and all the skins out) You can drink this fresh and add hot sauce, or pepper to your liking.

Here’s the strainer working if you’ve never seen it done before,

*If Canning, make sure your jars are prepared.  (this makes about 14 quarts) The recipe I got, did not come with canning directions so I went ahead and just canned according to another blend that was very similar. Boiling bath process for 45 minutes using quart sized jars. Remember to leave a head space of 1/4. I also used 2 tablespoons per jar of lemon juice just to be safe.

If you don’t plan on canning this juice, I’m not sure how you’ll drink up 14 quarts of juice so here’s a little tip. You don’t have to add the amount listed. Just scale it down to what will suit you with less vegetables. Remember most the juice comes from the tomatoes, so you need a good handful of them over anything else.

Drink up and Enjoy!