Many people tout the benefits of drinking a variety of juices, and that includes carrot juice. Made from a carrot, this juice is tasty for people who like carrots, but it can be hard to swallow for those who don’t. Literally.
However, it does have lots of health benefits, which we will get to later, and it can be a good way for you to get your intake of carrots if you don’t like eating them. If you want to make it just a little bit easier to digest, here’s how to make carrot juice taste better.
Flavor Profile
First, let’s discuss the flavor profile of carrot juice. In its rawest form, carrot juice tastes just like carrots. If you don’t strain it at all, it has a pulpy texture, but when thoroughly strained, carrot juice has the texture of a juice and the same flavor profile as a carrot.
It’s a little earthy, but there is some sweetness to it. Some people put the entire carrot into their carrot juice, including the stems, and those who do that end up with an even more bitter taste to their carrot juice. By only using the meat of a carrot, you’ll end up with a much sweeter carrot juice.
Now let’s move on to improving the taste of carrot juice.
Water It Down
If you don’t like the taste of carrots and find carrot juice to be far too intense, try watering it down. Most of the time, the answer to improving the taste of a beverage is not to water it down, but in this case, it could help.
Although it’s not particularly strong, carrots have a distinct flavor, and if you are not a fan, making it a little less concentrated will help it taste better.
Add Something Carbonated
Many people avoid drinking healthy drinks because they lack carbonation. Many people love the texture that carbonation brings, and carbonated beverages often have more flavor.
If you are turning away from soda and trying to drink more carrot juice for health reasons, make your carrot juice a little bit more like soda by adding a carbonated beverage to the mix. Just by adding sparkling water or a tonic, your carrot juice will improve in flavor and texture, making for a drink that’s much more like a seltzer than a healthy juice.
Add Some Veggies
You don’t have to drink carrot juice alone, though. If you want to get the benefits of the carrot while masking the taste of the carrot, add some more vegetables to your carrot juice, making it more like standard vegetable juice.
You can do this with just about any vegetable. Simply add your favorite vegetables to get the flavor that you desire. Whether it’s celery, beets, tomatoes, or anything else, adding some vegetables will really improve the flavor of carrot juice. You could also add some fruits if you’d like.
Put It in a Smoothie
In that same vein, you can also make your carrot juice into a smoothie. Now, you may think that is essentially the same as adding fruits to your carrot juice, but a smoothie is much different than fruit juice because of its texture.
Smoothies are much thicker, and they usually have some other ingredients like milk, yogurt, nut butter of some sort, and maybe a natural sweetener like honey or agave. If you have enough strong flavors in your smoothie, adding some carrot juice will not affect the flavor. It’ll mask the taste and be a great way to get even more nutrients into your smoothie.
Make a Cocktail
We don’t suggest doing this all the time, but you could try making a cocktail with your carrot juice. Carrot juice will pair well with dry and earthy alcohols like vodka or tequila, and with some salt around the rim and some ice in your glass, you might enjoy the taste of carrot juice.
One famous way to incorporate carrot juice into a cocktail is by making a Bunny Mary. This is a carrot twist and a Bloody Mary, and it’s perfect if you like that cocktail but want to get even more of a vegetable flavor incorporated into it.
Add It to Tomato Juice
If you’ve ever had V-8 juice, you’ll love this tip. To mask the flavor of carrot juice, add it to tomato juice. Tomato juice already has a very strong flavor, and if you like it but don’t like carrot juice, mixing the two will make the carrot juice much easier to stomach.
If you really want, you can incorporate your carrot and tomato juice into a cocktail, as noted before. Whether it’s a Bunny Mary or a tomato beer, your carrot juice will give it an extra zip without ruining the entire beverage.
Garnish Your Glass
One of the appeals to drinking cocktails is all the garnishes. It’s more fun to drink a beverage from a special glass, especially one full of garnishes and rimmed with delicious spices.
Although we typically reserve this for cocktails, there’s no reason we can’t transfer this practice to regular beverages like carrot juice. Serve your carrot juice in a fancy glass, add a stalk of celery, and line the rim with a special salt, and you’ll find yourself enjoying your carrot juice much more than if you were just drinking it with a rubber straw.
Health Benefits
As noted, there are tons of health benefits to drinking carrot juice. And although this is not an exhaustive list, here are some benefits you stand to gain by drinking it:
- May improve your eye health
- May improve your skin
- Is full of nutrients
- Could improve your blood sugar
- Is good for your internal organs, particularly your heart and liver
Enjoy your newly tasty glass of carrot juice!
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