Hildin’s Health Hints
Miracles of Probiotics
Why we need them in our bodies
Probiotics are crucial to enhance food absorption and boost our immune system. Fruit enzymes help to lower cholesterol, maintaining blood alkalinity, preventing cancer and high in antioxidant. Moreover, they can be used as exfoliants for skincare or as organic cleaning agents.
Fruit enzymes help animals and plants to absorb food and enhance their immunity too.
Papaya Enzyme
I have tried making grapes, dragon fruits, lemons, oranges, pineapple, apples, papaya and assorted fruit combinations enzymes. I now only use papaya to make the enzyme for two reasons. Firstly, papaya has the highest enzyme concentration, and its seeds have a high mineral content. Secondly, it tastes better as it produces a nice fizzy soda pop taste. Papaya is also not expensive. It is easy to slice into pieces and I can make up to six to eight 750ml bottles of enzymes from one huge papaya.
The papaya is my base enzyme. I can add other fresh fruits later when I make my drinks. My recipe differs from the usual recipe in that I use a powerful blender to blend them all up consuming the whole fruit, skin, and seeds. I serve them to my guests, and they all love it.
Other Fruits Enzyme
Use grapes if you like wine or Ribena. However, they cost more.
Use apples if you want to make apple cider vinegar. Keep it for at least two months and it becomes apple cider vinegar.
Homemade Probiotic Fruit Enzymes Drinks 3 Ingredients only
Ingredients
- Fruits. Wash them with skin intact and let it air-dry naturally.
Glass bottles. Get a few. Wash and air-dry them. (IKEA has good cheap glass bottles. I use my old instant Nescafé bottles. Some people use plastic, but I preferred to ferment in glass bottle) - Sugar. I use yellow rock sugar because I like the cooling aftertaste. You can use raw sugar. However, don’t use white sugar because they are artificially bleached. I boil sugar 2:1 water to make sugar syrup. Cool them and put aside. (The usual recipe asks for raw sugar grains to be placed between each layer of the fruits and shake the bottles every day. This is to get the fruits soak in the liquid. Else, it turns mouldy. I use syrup here because I don’t want to shake them every day. Your choice. The sugar is meant for feeding the microorganism, not for us. When the micro-organism consumes the sugar completely, the drink has a sourish-mildly sweet taste.
- Probiotics (optional). You can make fruits enzyme without extra probiotics. For me, the more probiotics, the merrier.
- Cutting board and knife: Wash and air-dry.
Method
- Cut the fruits into small pieces with their skin and seeds included. Drop them into the bottles. Fill them up between half to three-quarters full. I am going to blend them later with fresh fruits (optional). Be careful not to add too many fruits else it becomes like smoothies unless you are making smoothies.
- Add in the packet of probiotics (optional) before adding in the cooled syrup. Make sure the syrup covers all the fruits. As the fruits ferment, they will give off bubbles. So, allow a 2 cm air gap from the top. If the fruits float up, use a wooden chopstick (not metal) to push them under the syrup.
- Close them and put them in dry cool places away from direct light.
- Keep the bottles of fruits for 2 to 3 weeks. During this time, the active bacteria cause bubbling and sizzling. To prevent the liquid from overflowing, remember to leave a 2 cm air gap from the top. If you use sugar grains, you must shake the bottles every day to distribute the liquid.
After 2 weeks take a porcelain spoon (not metal) and taste it. It should be sourish sweet but not too sweet. If it is too sweet, just leave it for another few days more for it to mature. - If you are giving to young kids, put the matured fruit enzymes in the fridge to slow down the fermenting as it will slowly turn into wine with alcoholic content.
- I didn’t put mine in the fridge (When my teenage daughter drinks it, her face flushes and her cheeks turn rosy)
Serving
The finished enzyme is quite concentrated. Dilute it with 3 to 4 parts of water. To serve it as drinks I pour the whole content with seeds and all into my big powerful blender. I add water 1:1 and chop fresh fruits with skin and seeds to blend them smoothly. Don’t add too many fruits or they become thick like smoothies, unless you want smoothies.
Pour them into a jug and dilute it further with 1:1 water. Store them in the fridge. They taste pleasant when served with meals. This way, I get to eat the whole fruits, skin, seeds with no waste at all. They should last you a few days in the fridge.
If we add milk instead of water, it tastes like a Yakult yoghurt drink. If it tastes too sour, you can add more syrup.
If you want the fruit enzyme to mature faster than 2/3weeks, you can add apple cider to hasten the fermenting process by a week or two. You can save some of the fruit pieces for our next batch. Instead of 2 to 3 weeks it should be ready in a week or two.
You can give this to your plants as a homemade plant fertiliser. Dilute it 1:10 with water. The microorganism helps plants to absorb the nutrient from the soil. You can add some in the water for your pets to drink to help their guts and increase their immunity.
Remember to save some for your next batch to shorten the fermenting times.
For more of Hildin’s Health Hints: write to paulinewoon63@gmail.com
