Lately at work I’ve found myself making a lot of clear fruit juices. We use them for a variety of purposes: to make a clear flavoured syrup, to add some more flavour to a fruit broth/consomme, or to make a clear fruit gelee (like jello, but nice). It’s also a good way of using up fruit that is not moldy yet, but isn’t to happy and fresh either. There are a two different methods to making your own clarified fruit juices but they do both take about two days.
Method one:
Take your fruit, cut it into small pieces, and freeze it on a sheet pan 1 layer thick. The pieces of fruit should be as small as you are comfortable cutting – no smaller than a brunoise, but not large dice either. Once the fruit is fully frozen, take it out and defrost it over a perferated pan or in a strainer over a container to collect the juice. This will take a while, about a day or so.
Method 2:
Make a puree with your fruit, the smoother, the better, and hang the puree in a cheesecoth pouch. To make the pouch, take a nice big piece of cheesecloth and fold it over a few times so it’s about 4-6 ply, tie it well, and hang in the fridge over a bowl for a day or so. Resist the urge to squeeze the bag too mcuh as this may stop the juice from being clear. The better you made the pouch, the more you can squeeze. This technique is very similar to how you make yogurt cheese, and is used by some chefs still stuck in 2002 to make ‘tomato consomme’.
