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Re-liquefying honey is easy and saves food waste – because you don’t have to throw away crystallized honey. Here you can find out how.

Honey is a popular sweetener for drinks and food. Handling is easiest when it is liquid. However, all natural honeys crystallize over time and become hard. The honey can then no longer be dosed and used so easily.

But you don’t have to give up crystallized honey immediately: you can avoid food waste by re-liquefying honey that has become hard. This is easy to do with a hot water bath. After that, you can continue to use it as before.

Things to know about crystallized honey

Fresh honey is always liquid. Chemically, honey is a solution of water and sugar and contains important enzymes and nutrients.

However, some types of sugar are not entirely soluble in water. When a certain concentration of sugar content is reached, crystals form. The more crystals that form, the harder the honey becomes.

Glucose forms crystals particularly quickly. Honey types with a high glucose content therefore harden more quickly, including rapeseed honey, for example. Honey types with a higher fructose content, on the other hand, form crystals less quickly. Honeys containing fructose include forest honey or chestnut honey. But no matter what kind it is: It is not difficult to make crystallized honey liquid again.

Crystalized honey is not harmful

Even types of honey with a low glucose content crystallize after a while. But that’s not bad. On the contrary: if your honey crystallizes, this is a sign of real quality and a natural origin.

Although crystallized honey is not harmful, the crystals can become uncomfortable when consumed. It is therefore best to store the honey at room temperature. Glucose forms crystals more quickly in the refrigerator and honey solidifies sooner.

Also, stir the honey regularly. Stirring will break up the sugar crystals and keep the honey liquid longer. Should crystals nevertheless form, a simple water bath is sufficient to make the honey liquid again.

Making honey liquid again: Here’s how

Crystallized honey usually becomes softer again just by stirring it extensively. You can use a water bath to make solid honey completely liquid again.

Here’s how you do it:

Heat some water in a small saucepan. This should not exceed a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius, otherwise the enzymes and nutrients contained in the honey will break down.
Place the honey jar in the warm water bath.
Leave the jar in the water bath until the honey has become liquid again. Stir constantly to speed up the process.
Important: Since the nutrients in honey are sensitive to heat, the honey should not be exposed to high heat for too long. Therefore, try to avoid crystallization by stirring constantly.

When buying honey, always make sure that it comes from fair and bee-friendly production. This helps the bees and protects the environment. Therefore, buy honey from local beekeepers and if possible in organic quality.

Making ACE juice yourself has many advantages. The juice is freshly squeezed, rich in vitamins and without artificial additives. We’ll tell you how you can press the juice yourself – with and without a juicer.

If you make your own ACE juice, you can do without the juice from the supermarket in the future. This has many advantages. Oko-Test has shown that many packaged vegetable juices are often full of sugar. With homemade ACE juice, you can avoid adding sugar and avoid the sugar traps.

The juices from the supermarket also usually run through a mechanized process. Secondary plant substances are often lost during the pressing. If you make your own ACE juice, however, these are retained. You can also pay attention to organic quality when buying the ingredients and thus avoid chemical-synthetic pesticides in your juice.

We recommend buying the necessary fruit and vegetables seasonally. You can find out when you can buy certain types of fruit and vegetables from German cultivation in our seasonal calendar. So you can replace summer fruit in winter, for example, with fruit or vegetables that have a similar amount of vitamins or taste similar. Depending on what you feel like, you can vary the taste and color of the juice, and at the same time it remains a regional-seasonal juice with the A, C, and E vitamins.

Things to know about ACE juice

ACE Juice is a healthy soft drink made from juiced vegetables and fruits. The classic ingredients are oranges, carrots and water. In addition, vitamins and sugar are usually added to ready-made juice.

ACE juice owes its name to the vitamins it contains. So the juice should be rich in:

Beta carotene (provitamin A)
vitamin C
vitamin E
Carrots mainly contain beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. Oranges are rich in vitamin C. Vitamin E is found in vegetable oils, among other things. That’s why you should always mix some vegetable oil into your own juice. This also ensures that your body can absorb the fat-soluble beta-carotene. Other ingredients that are suitable for the juice are, for example, apples, ginger or beetroot.

Tip: Mix some lemon juice into your ACE juice. This will prevent the juice from discoloring due to oxidation.

Make ACE juice yourself: In the juicer

Ingredients:

2carrots
2apples
2oranges
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp vegetable oil (e.g. rapeseed, sunflower or linseed oil)
some mineral water

Directions:

Wash apples and carrots. Remove the core from the carrots and the core from the apple. Cut both into small pieces.
Peel the orange and cut into wedges.
Put apples, carrots and orange in the juicer.
Mix the fresh ACE juice with lemon juice and oil.
Dilute the ACE juice with a dash of water if you like.

Make ACE juice yourself: without a juicer

If you don’t have a juicer, use a blender and cheesecloth to make the ACE juice. This is how you can do it in just a few steps:

Wash the ingredients, peel them if necessary and cut them into the smallest possible pieces.
Put everything in a powerful blender. Puree fruits and vegetables to a fine pulp.
If your blender isn’t powerful enough, mix some lukewarm water into the ingredients.
Pour the puree through a fine sieve or cheesecloth and collect the juice in a container. Squeeze out the mass thoroughly.
Then add oil and water to your ACE juice as needed.
Tip: Store the fresh juice in sterile jars or bottles. The juice will keep in the fridge for a few days.

Who doesn’t know it: You left carrots for too long and now they’ve gone soft? No problem! This simple trick will make them crunchy again.

If you leave carrots for too long, they will become soft and take on a rubbery texture. Of course, they are still suitable as an ingredient in cooking – but most people simply prefer crunchy carrots in salads or as a raw food snack.

Luckily, there’s a simple trick you can use to refresh soft carrots. Not only do you enhance their taste, but you also avoid potential food waste.

Tip: When buying carrots, make sure that they are organic if possible. You are supporting ecologically more sustainable agriculture that, for example, does not use chemical-synthetic pesticides. Root vegetables such as carrots absorb these pesticides particularly strongly from the soil. The organic seals from Demeter, Naturland and Bioland are particularly recommended.

Make soft carrots crunchy again: Here’s how

Here’s the trick to making soft carrots crunchy again:

Place the carrots in a tall glass.
Fill the jar with cold water so that all the carrots are covered.
Place the jar in the refrigerator or other cool place for at least 8 hours.
After this period of time, you can take them out and enjoy them fresh.

In another article, you will learn how to store carrots correctly so that they can be kept for a long time.

Making carrots crisp again: important tips

Depending on how soft the carrots are, they can take up to 48 hours in water to crisp up again.

Tip: tend to put the carrots in a larger glass, as they often become plumper and therefore more voluminous in the water.

Good to know: You can also freshen up other root vegetables such as radishes or turnips with this trick.