A centrifugal juicer offers speed and ease of use. You can get more juice faster using one of these machines. Find out what features to look for and which models are the best.
Why Juice?
Many, many different health benefits to juicing have been documented over the years. Fresh squeezed juice is full of vitamins and enzymes that are essential for your body. There are few other natural sources where you can get these vital nutrients. You won’t find them in store-bought juice, which is processed and heated to destroy the enzymes, and pumped with preservatives, sugar, and other artificial ingredients. The vitamin and mineral count that you see on the juice carton is generally from artificial vitamins that have been infused back into the juice. Some manufacturers will even add little pieces of artificial pulp to make it seem like you are getting fresh pulp.
Nothing beats fresh-squeezed juice. You know exactly what goes into it and it has all of the fresh vitamins and enzymes that the actual fruit or vegetable has. Plus you get an infusion of vitamins as most of the essential nutrients of fruits and vegetables are found in the juice, not in the pulp which is mainly fiber. When you switch from store-bought juice and start making your own healthy fruit and vegetable juice you’ll find you have more energy, feel better, and your body will even start to look better. Nothing beats fresh juice!
Types of Juicers
There are basically three types of juicers, citrus juicers, centrifugal juicers, and masticating juicers. Citrus juicers are designed just for citrus fruits like oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit. You can’t use these types of juicers for any other type of fruit or vegetable. To use a citrus juicer you simply cut the fruit in half and place it down on a cone. With an electric citrus juicer, the cone will spin on its own and squeeze out the fresh juice as you push down. With a manual model, you need to twist and push down on the fruit half on your own using muscle power. If you are going to be juicing primarily citrus fruits, then I would recommend getting a citrus juicer exclusively for that purpose. You can read more about citrus juicers in another article I have on this site.
With centrifugal juicers you can juice any fruit or vegetable including citrus fruits. Centrifugal juicers work by spinning ingredients very fast inside a chamber with cutting blades at the bottom. A filter will extract the juice into a juice container and the pulp that is left behind is ejected into another container. These machines work very fast with many manufacturers claiming that you can get an 8-ounce glass of juice in 5 seconds or less. Centrifugal juicers will basically extract juice as fast as you can feed fruits and vegetables into their feed tubes.
The final type of juicer is the masticating juicer, sometimes referred to as a wheatgrass juicer. Wheatgrass juicers use augers and gears to crush foods and squeeze out juice. They can be used to juice any fruit or vegetable including tough to juice leafy greens and wheatgrass. They are more efficient than centrifugal juicers, meaning they can extract more juice from the same ingredients, leaving very dry pulp. The drawback with masticating juicers is that they are very slow. They also have a lot of moving parts that are harder to clean than centrifugal juicers. You will also have to chop up a lot of your ingredients before you put them in a masticating juicer because the feed tubes on these machines are smaller than those on centrifugal juicers.
Choosing A Juicer
So what kind of juicer should you get? It really depends on personal preference and how you plan on using the machine. If you just want fresh orange juice in the morning then go with a citrus juicer. If you want other types of fruit and vegetable juice then look at either a centrifugal juicer or masticating juicer. If you want to juice a lot of wheatgrass and leafy greens like spinach, then you’ll need a masticating juicer to get the job done.
If you plan on occasionally juicing leafy greens, but juicing lots of other types of fruits and vegetables then I would suggest choosing a centrifugal juicer. This is especially true of you don’t want to spend a lot of time preparing fruits and vegetables and waiting for your juice. I think that’s what turns a lot of people off to juicing – it just takes too much time. With a centrifugal juicer though getting your fresh juice can be really fast. Not quite as fast as just reaching in the fridge for a carton of sugary store-bought juice, but almost.
Features You Should Look For On Centrifugal Juicers
All centrifugal juicers work on basically the same principle. They use a motor to spin the food fast and squeeze out the juice. Manufacturers will differentiate their juicers by offering a variety of different features. Here are a few that you should be aware of.
Motor strength and speeds – A strong motor, something 600 watts or more is essential to power through tough fruits and vegetables like carrots. The last thing you want is to have your juicer get jammed up and not be able to juice because it’s too weak. Many centrifugal juicers also come with variable speeds. This is helpful because you can vary the speed to match the ingredient. Harder ingredients like carrots require a faster speed than grapes for example.
Continuous pulp ejection – This means that the juicer will keep shooting out pulp as you add ingredients. The only time you have to stop it is when the pulp container fills up and needs to be emptied. This usually only happens though after you get a lot of juice out of the machine. Juicers without continuous pulp ejection need to have the pulp cleaned out frequently as you are juicing. This slows the whole process down. These models tend to be slightly quieter though. Overall I recommend going with a continuous juicing model simply because they are faster and easier.
Pulp regulation – This is a nice feature to have if you like to control the amount of pulp in your juice. Some people, like me, like a bit more pulp in the final product, others like nothing but pure juice. A pulp regulator will let you screen out the pulp so that you can have a lot of pulp or very little.
Size of the feeding tube – Generally the larger the better. A large feeding tube is mainly a time saver. You don’t have to cut fruits and vegetables down into small little pieces before feeding them into the juicer. Three inches seems to be about the biggest I’ve found on centrifugal juicers, which is large enough to place whole medium sized apples in without having to cut them. Having the feeding tube positioned over the center of the machine where the cutting blade assembly is also helps with juicing efficiency and allows the blades to juice the ingredients more evenly.
Advantages of Centrifugal Juicers
- Fast – You get a lot of juice very quickly, so if you are pressed for time, then a centrifugal juicer is by far the best choice for you.
- Easy to use – With most machines you just need to turn them on and throw in the ingredients. Juice then comes out one end and pulp out of the other. For machines with different speed settings you’ll need to appropriately match the ingredient with the speed. Most of the juicers will tell you in the owner’s manual which speed setting is right for which ingredient.
- Minimal prep time – Most centrifugal juicers have a large feeding tube, usually 3 inches or more, so you won’t have to chop up ingredients into small pieces and put them in the tube. You can just throw whole apples in and let the juicer do its job.
- Easy to clean up – Unlike masticating juicers that have a bunch of parts that you have to fit together like a puzzle, centrifugal juicers usually just have a few large parts that are easy to take apart and put back together. Most parts are also dishwasher safe too, making clean up very fast and easy.
Disadvantages
- Foamy juice – Because centrifugal juicers users a spinning mechanism to extract juice, the juice does tend to come out a bit foamy. Some machines will offer a foam catcher that will siphon off the foam from the juice as it comes out of the juice spigot. Other models have juice containers with a top that will hold back the foam. If you don’t like foam or froth in your juice then look for models that offer these types of features.
- Not as efficient as masticating juicers – The pulp will come out a bit wetter than with a masticating juicer. With faster speeds you sacrifice a little with efficiency. If you feel the need for drier pulp, then you can feed the extracted pulp back through the juicer a second time. This will extract even more juice. Of course this adds to your juicing time slightly but not really that much as you can just dump the pulp out of the pulp container directly back into the juicer. Just make sure to get the pulp container back into place before you start juicing again.
- Some enzyme loss – Because centrifugal juicers spin the ingredients at a fast pace, heat is created which can destroy some enzymes in the final juice product. The loss is not great, but is slightly more than what you would get with a slower masticating juicer. However, with a centrifugal juicer you’ll still have way more nutrients, enzymes, and vitamins in your juice than you would have with store-bought juice.
Top Three Best Centrifugal Juicers
Here is a list of my top three best centrifugal juicers. They are the highest-rated models based on customer reviews, features, quality, durability, efficiency, and price. These models are also listed on my best juicer list along with the best citrus and masticating juicers.
01. Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite
Breville is clearly the top choice when it comes to centrifugal juicers. They have several models on the market and all of them are best sellers and highly rated. The 800JEXL has a 970 watts engine and 2 speeds that will rotate the cutting blades at 6,500 and 13,000 rpm’s. That makes this machine very, very fast. It fills up an 8-ounce cup with juice in only 5 seconds. The powerful engine enables it to juice a pineapple even with the rind.
The Breville 800JEXL comes highly rated with over 640 reviews on Amazon.com alone and an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. It offers continuous juicing and automatic pulp ejection as well as a large 3-inch feeding tube enabling you to put large fruits and vegetables down without cutting them up. It’s easy to clean with dishwasher safe parts and has a cleaning brush for the cutting blade assembly included.
This particular model uses a dual knife, to ensure the fruit and vegetables stay centered on the cutter and filter. This cuts them into tiny particles and keeps them against the filter. Ultimately, this results in 30% more juice than other models.
I have a full Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite review on this site if you want to read more. Click here to check on the best price for the Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite Juice Extractor
02. Breville BJE510XL Ikon Juice Extractor
Another Breville model makes it to number two on my list. This model offers five speeds instead of the two that you get with the 800JEXL however it’s not quite as powerful, with a 900 watt engine instead of a 970-watt engine. Still, it’s powerful enough to handle any tough ingredient you throw into it. Plus it’s lighter and smaller than the 800JEXL, weighing only 9 pounds.
Like other Breville models, the BJE510XL is built with smart chip technology that controls the power output of the engine, matching it to the strain of the ingredients. In other words the engine will work harder and use more power for harder ingredients like carrots and expend less power on softer ingredients like tomatoes. This makes the engine highly efficient and will help it to last longer.
You can read even more details about this model in my Breville BJE510XL Ikon Juice Extractor review. If you want to check for the best deal on the Breville BJE510XL Ikon Juice Extractor simply click here.
03. Hamilton Beach 67650 Big Mouth Pro Juice Extractor
If you want a high-quality but low priced model then the Big Mouth Pro is the way to go. Priced under $80 this model is not as powerful as the two Brevilles, but at 820 watts it’s still very strong. You’ll have no problem juicing whole fruits and vegetables using the large three-inch feeding tube. The Big Mouth also offers continuous juicing and automatic pulp ejection. It’s the smallest model on my list, weighing only 8.8 pounds.
Despite its lower price, the Big Mouth Pro offers high quality and durability backed up by a one year warranty. Owners really love this model with over 600 reviews on Amazon.com with an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars.
Check out my in-depth Hamilton Beach 67650 Big Mouth Pro Juice Extractor Review if you’d like to learn more. Click here to find the best prices for the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juice Extractor.
Conclusion
A centrifugal juicer is a great choice if you want to juice a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables and don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it. They are fast, powerful, and easy to clean. And when you start tasting that fresh juice you’ll never want to go back to store-bought juice. Your health will improve, you’ll start to feel better, and you’ll really kick start your day with a delicious glass of fresh orange juice in the morning – served up quickly and easily with your new centrifugal juicer.