What to Do with Leftover Pulp from Juicing

Juicing at home is a quick way to get your daily dose of nutrition, but it can also be expensive for those on a budget as there is a lot of pulp from the fruit or vegetable which does not translate into juice.

If you’re here wondering what you can do with your leftover juice pulp, you probably already know that there’s a lot of nutritional value and fiber in the pulp and this typically ends up in the compost pit or worse it ends up in your household waste.

Is the Skin Edible? Don't Peel It Away - Pulp It!

The first step towards using your juice pulp is making sure that you’re not wasting any of it before you actually begin juicing. Do not peel your carrots, apples or cucumbers (especially if they are bio products). Wash them well and put them into your juicer after chopping. The edible skin of fruits and vegetables should never be wasted as they are very often better than the fruit in terms of nutritional value per unit weight.

There are different kinds of juicers and the best choice in my opinion would be a masticating juicer as they tend to extract a lot of juice leaving the pulp very dry, relatively speaking. For most of the suggestions on what you can do with leftover pulp from juicing that you find below, you would need your pulp to be somewhat dry, but not always. So don’t fret if you don’t have a masticating juicer. Any juicer that you have, even the cheap ones are perfectly fine. You’re just going to have to use the pulp differently.

Ideas to Make the Best Use of Your Pulp

Let's dive right in and take a look at the many ways you can use your vegetable and fruit pulp and turn them into something delicious.

1. Veggie and Fruit Crackers

Crackers from pulp? Sounds like a brilliant idea, but are they really worth making? Well, the simple answer would be yes, but you’re going to want to test out different combinations and see what works best for you. A mix of apple, parsley, cucumber and spinach with a little cranberry pulp turns out amazing in my opinion. But to each his or her own and I definitely recommend you try different mixes out. I have a couple that I use.

To make the crackers you’re going to want to take two cups of pulp mix in a bowl and mix it up with some spices, garlic powder or freshly pressed garlic, salt, chilly powder and other herbs of your choosing to season it. You can taste it while it’s still a wet mix.

Take this mixture and place it on baking paper in a tray and spread it flat. I like to sprinkle some sesame and lightly ground sunflower seeds on top of this spread. Use a pizza cutter or a knife to gently form squares or any shape that you’d like your crackers to be. If you want your kids to get some veggies in them, you could also use cookie cutters to create fun shapes they’d want to eat. You would now place them in the oven at the lowest heat setting for around 4 - 5 hours.

Don’t worry, it’s the lowest setting, so it’s not consuming a lot of electricity. I also like to place a couple of trays to get the best use of the energy being consumed. The thinner the spread, the quicker they’re ready. If your oven does not let moisture escape, quickly open the oven every 20 - 30 minutes to let any water vapour out.

Once crisp, take them out, let them cool down a bit and break them apart before storing in a cool airtight container.

2. Dips and Spreads

You can also add leftover pulp into your favourite dips and spreads or make your own dips and spreads from scratch. For instance, while making hummus, for every cup of chickpeas, add a quarter cup of pulp. If you want a cheese based spread, mix in your pulp with cream cheese or even Greek yogurt.

3. Make Your Own Broth

Many people, me included loving making their own bone broth. If that’s the case, just add some of your collected juice pulp to your crockpot along with your other ingredients. Since the pulp is ground, you’re going to have to strain at the end with a sufficiently fine strainer. It’s a great way to get a little more of the nutrition out of your pulp before tossing it away. Unfortunately you won’t really be getting much fibre out of it this way. If you're wondering how you go about making bone broth, the video below is helpful. I would suggest watching it at 2x the speed if you know how :)

Alternatively, if you want to go the veggie way, you can use just a whole lot of your collected pulp, add it to a crock pot add in some garlic, maybe a chopped onion, some salt, herbs and spices before bringing it to a boil. Once it boils, let it boil for around 5 minutes before you switch off the stove. Let this concoction sit for around 6 - 7 hours before straining and storing for use. Of course this works best with high percentage vegetable pulp and not a lot of fruit.

4. Baked Goods

I don’t bake as much as I should. But, for those of you who make cookies, bread or muffins (shout out to pancakes too) you should try adding leftover pulp the next time around. When it comes to mixing baking with pulp, most people I know are very conservative and only tend to use carrot pulp in muffins or as a mix to their banana cake. But I’m going to suggest that you get more creative and try and use different combinations of fruit and veggie pulp. I’ve not tried it out yet, but this recipe that uses a mix of carrot, pineapple and orange juice pulp has been bookmarked for quite a while.

Muffins are traditionally sweet and most of you, me included would not want to use herb and green leafy vegetable leftovers into a muffin. This does not imply you cannot use it when you bake. Give it a shot and mix it in when you make bread. If you don’t usually make bread, you could give it a try. The video below is a silent video with descriptions. The bread sure does look good once it’s out of the oven!

5. Use in Veggie Patties and Fritters

Whenever I’ve got a big chunk of juice pulp this is my go-to. Unlike the other suggestions we’ve seen above, in this case, the pulp is the bulk of the material and therefore literally all your pulp can be converted to patties for burgers or you could make some fritters.

Fruit and veggie pulp adds a lot of fiber and therefore is a base material that helps hold the burger together. Of course, you would have to add some flour and other binding agents such as oats or kidney beans to the mix before adding into your food processor. I use egg white as a binding agent, but if you’re vegan this is not an option. Below is a laid back video that describes how you could do it yourself and the speaker is right in saying that you could not go wrong with this as you can add spices and seasoning throughout the process and taste as you go to make sure it’s perfect.

6. Dog Treats

Before I talk about converting leftover pulp from your juice to delicious and healthy dog treats which would also save you a lot of money, I would like to add a word of caution: there are certain foods that your dog must not eat. This website lists out some of the food items you should not feed your dog.

A friend collects his juice pulp and places it in the freezer and once a week thaws it out, adds some flax seeds and also sunflower seeds to the mix. The video below shows someone adding bananas to the mix to add some additional nutritional value. Not a bad idea at all in my opinion. The process is very similar to the way crackers are made (see the first point above).

But I must add, that I do not have a dog, so I’m not the best at advising on dog nutrition. This is just an idea of what you could do, but please do your research first.

Other Ways

There are many other ways yo could use your pulp, for instance, add some to your pizza dough, to homemade granola bars, to scrambled eggs, to gravys and more. The options are limitless.