Making Tangerine Juice

We have several citrus trees planted around the house - satsumas, tangerines, and navel oranges.  In the early Spring, if you can't locate me, look for me around the citrus trees smelling the blooms.  The fragrance is intoxicating.  There's no smell like it.  Around this time, though, it is time to harvest the fruit off of the trees.  We normally wait until we've had a few frosts to begin picking as we've read in several publications that the first cold snaps cause the citrus to get sweeter and more juicy.

Tangerines

Today, we'll harvest some fruit off one of our tangerine trees.  We've picked a few off the trees here or there and amazingly discovered that Rosie, our Jersey cow, loves to eat the peelings.  So we stood by the fence eating tangerines and handing the peelings over to Rosie to dispose of.  Nothing was left to compost.  Reminded me of the 'Jack Sprat' nursery rhyme:

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.His wife could eat no lean.And so between them both, you see,They licked the platter clean.

A number of years ago, I was picking satsumas off the tree and my neighbor remarked that I was doing it all wrong.  I didn't know there was a right way and a wrong way to pick citrus, but I was mistaken.  If you just pull the fruit off the tree, many times you'll get something that resembles this:

Let 'er rip (if you're gonna eat right away)

Can you see how ripping the fruit off the tree tears a piece of the peeling off, exposing the underlying fruit?  If you don't eat it right away, it will dry out and become hard.  My neighbor taught me to twist the fruit until it snaps off.

Let's twist again (like we did last summer)

By twisting (with apologies to Chubby Checker), it doesn't tear and you'll have a little "button" instead of a tear.  

Picking Perfection

So after I did a lot of twisting, I filled up the cake cover that I was using for a harvesting bucket and set them down by some purple flowers and loofahs that were drying in the sun on the back porch. The colors just jump out and grab you...

Brilliant Orange color!

I went inside and began slicing the fruit in half as I decided I would make a pitcher of fresh squeezed tangerine juice.  So juicy!

Sliced Tangerines

In addition to the cutting board and knife, I assembled the juicer, a strainer, and the pitcher and got busy.

The assembly line

These little boogers were full of juice.  They had a few seeds, but the strainer caught most of those before they went into the pitcher.

Extracting Tangerine Nectar

As you can see, it didn't take many tangerines to fill the pitcher.  Were they ever juicy~

First pitcher of tangerine juice

The color of the tangerine juice was almost a neon orange and the scent was nice.

I put the pitcher into the refrigerator and allowed it to get to 38 degrees and then poured myself a glass.  Wow!  So sweet and tart at the same time.  Absolutely delicious!  We'll be juicing a bunch of them as we have several trees left to pick.