Make Apple Juice at Home With Your Bare Hands
Apple pie, applesauce, apple crumbs, apple butter – whether you are picking apples or just stocking up at the supermarket, this is very season. What about apple juice ? Whatever it is, it has never been a staple of home cooking. Unlike soft citrus fruits that can be squeezed by hand or with a simple tool, apples require a suitable cold-pressed juicer … or do they ???
Food52 has a trick from a new cookbook by chefs Stuart Brios and Nicole Krasinski, State Bird Provisions , to make apple juice by hand while feeling a bit like the Hulk.
If you freeze the apples for eight hours and then defrost them completely — for about three hours — they will become soft enough to juice by hand.
All this is due to the fact that water expands when it freezes. In fruits and other plant matter, when the ice expands, the plant cell walls break, causing the thawed fruit to become soft. This is usually a tricky task when freezing food, but when the goal is soft, pliable fruit, this is the perfect shortcut.
It may taste different from the apple juice available at the store. Briosa and Krasinski write: “The resulting liquid has an intense, concentrated flavor, sweetness and astringency.” But it sounds pretty damn good to me.