How to Clean a Juicer

Cleanup is the most common reason a juicer stops being used, and it is almost entirely a timing problem rather than a machine problem. Wet pulp rinses off in seconds. The same pulp, dried into a mesh screen twenty minutes later, needs a brush and some patience.

The routine

1. 1.Do it before you drink the juice. Pour the glass, set it down, deal with the machine. This single reordering is worth more than any feature on any machine.
2. 2.Empty the pulp bin. Line it with a bag and it never needs washing -- just lift the bag out.
3. 3.Run water through the machine while it is running. A cup or two poured into the chute clears most of the loose pulp from the auger or basket before you take anything apart.
4. 4.Disassemble and rinse under a hot tap. Auger or basket, screen, drum, lid. Thirty seconds, no soap needed at this stage.
5. 5.Brush the screen from the OUTSIDE. This is the step people get backwards. Water and bristles working from outside push pulp out of the perforations the way it came; working from inside drives it further in.
6. 6.Stand the parts up to drain. Do not nest them wet inside each other -- that is how a faint smell develops.

Done immediately in that order, this is a ninety-second job on a vertical cold press machine and about two minutes on a centrifugal one. Deferred until after breakfast, the screen alone takes longer than the whole routine would have.

The screen is the entire problem

Everything else on a juicer is smooth plastic or steel and rinses clean. The fine mesh is the only component that genuinely holds residue, because pulp dries into the perforations and then has to be dislodged individually.

Which is why some manufacturers have removed it. Hurom's Easy Clean range has no mesh strainer at all -- marketed as Scrub-Free Cleaning -- and Cuisinart's CSJ-300 uses a mesh-free filter at a third of the price. That is a structural answer rather than a better brush. The easiest juicers to clean ranks the field on it.

Soap, vinegar and baking soda

• Soap: not needed for the daily rinse if you do it immediately. Use it for a weekly deeper wash.
• White vinegar: the useful one. A soak in warm water with a splash of vinegar lifts mineral film and dulled surfaces, and helps with light staining. Rinse thoroughly afterwards.
• Baking soda: a mild abrasive paste for stubborn marks on smooth plastic. Do not use it on mesh screens -- abrasives damage the perforations, and a deformed screen extracts worse.
• Nothing stronger without checking your manual. Bleach and dishwasher tablets dissolved in water are not worth the risk to plastics that contact food.

The dishwasher question

Check per machine, because brands differ and several do not state it at all. What is published:

Where a brand does not state it, hand wash. Dishwasher heat can distort fine mesh screens, and a distorted screen is a permanent extraction problem rather than a cosmetic one.

Stains

Carrots, beets and especially turmeric stain plastic. Turmeric is effectively permanent if you let it sit -- an auger used daily for turmeric will be yellow within a week and will stay that way.

• Rinse immediately. The only thing that genuinely prevents staining.
• Use a plastic board, not wood. Beet and turmeric on a wooden board are forever.
• Wipe the worktop straight away, not after you have finished the glass.
• Accept some discolouration on a machine used daily for roots. It is cosmetic and does not affect the juice.
• Soak in warm water with white vinegar for established marks. It lifts some of it.

Juicers for turmeric and juicers for beets cover the produce-specific versions.

When you genuinely have no time

The minimum viable version, in order of importance: empty the pulp bin, run water through the machine, and submerge the parts in a bowl of water until you can deal with them properly.

The enemy is drying, not dirt. Parts left submerged for two hours clean as easily as parts cleaned immediately; parts left dry for two hours do not. Do you have to clean a juicer after every use covers what can reasonably wait.