Fresh-Squeezed Tangerine Juice

During the peak summer months of high heat and humidity, I sometimes question the sanity of living in this tropical climate.  From the middle of June to the middle of September, it can be somewhat unbearable to step outdoors.  But, as I'm reminded, I should dwell on good things:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.  - Philippians 4:8

One of the truly delightful things about living in the South is citrus.  Around this time each year, we are awash in citrus.  We pick Satsumas by the bagful and keep our fridge full of them.  We have friends that give us grapefruit and others that we swap milk for Meyer lemons.  We have a navel orange that is loaded with fruit, but the oranges are not quite ready to pick yet.  We also have tangerine trees.  In the photo below, the tangerine tree is on the right and the navel orange tree is on the left.

Citrus

Let's take a closer look.  This is a young tree and the fruit are loading down the branches.  The deep orange/slightly reddish fruit are ready.  I was going to do a little pruning on this tree, but I like the shape of it and will likely leave it alone.

One of our Three Tangerine trees

It was a nice afternoon and I grabbed a bowl and walked out to one of the trees and began picking the low-hanging fruit.  That's the easiest, right?  Here's the thing about tangerines: They are easy to pick off the tree, but they are hard to peel. The skin holds tightly to the fruit, unlike satsumas.  We normally don't peel any of them. We'll cut them up into quarters and eat them right off the peel. They are loaded with seeds, so you've got to be ready to spit, but they are so flavorful - tart, but sweet!

Bowlful of tangerines

The other thing I really like to do with them besides eating them is to JUICE THEM!  I brought my bowl inside and retrieved a sharp knife.  I cut them through the middle - not through the stem and bottom.  They are so juicy, the juice just runs out all over the cutting board.  The juice makes your fingers sting it is so tart.  The fragrance of citrus fills the room.

Soon to be juice

We have an old citrus juicer that is powered by 'elbow grease.'  The ridges on the juicer, ruptures all the little tangerine sections, releasing the juice, pulp, and seeds into the juicer.  Each half yields an 'almost full' juicer that needs to be poured into the pitcher. 

Squeezin'

A place a sieve over the pitcher to catch all the pulp and seeds before it makes its way into the pitcher.  Before I toss the seeds and pulp into the compost bucket along with the tangerine halves, I press down on the pulp to squeeze out any remaining juice.

Straining

Nineteen tangerines yielded a full pitcher of beautiful, freshly squeezed tangerine juice.  In addition to tasting good, tangerines are good for you, providing a good source of Vitamin A and Potassium and provide 128% of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C.

The finished product

In a patience-building exercise, I didn't taste it.  I put the pitcher into the refrigerator to get it really, really cold.

Just Chilling.

And then...  I promptly forgot about it!  The next morning at work, I received a text from my wife that said, "WOW!  Fresh squeezed tangerine juice is delicious!" When I got home in the afternoon, she had a glass of tangerine juice waiting on me. She was right. It was delicious and we'll continue to make fresh squeezed tangerine juice as long as they last.  The stuff looks like sunshine.  I'll also make some tangerine curd and try some tangerine marmalade.