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This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking, and buying right now.
When I first started in the test kitchen, then senior food editor Andy Baraghani pulled open a drawer, waved his hands over the contents, and asked me to pick my favorite. Inside were an array of citrus juicers, from old-school wooden reamers to levered metal squeezers. “You can tell a lot about a person depending on what type of juicer they use,” Andy said, somewhat ominously. I’m not sure what it says about me, but my go-to—Vintage Kitchen’s fruit press—was nowhere to be seen.
I love fresh-squeezed orange or grapefruit juice in the morning, but filling a glass using most manual juicers requires lots of strength and time, and the electric machines are usually hard to clean or too loud to start the day with. But thanks to my beautiful Vintage Kitchen juicer, a tall glass of OJ can be had in minutes with a minimal amount of effort.
I first came across this type of wide-mouth countertop juicer years ago while working as a commis chef in a restaurant, making gallons of lemon mayo from scratch every single day. I loved it so much that I got one for my apartment too, and it’s been in my kitchen ever since. For someone who’s on the small side and not particularly strong—like me—the levered design makes it effortless to extract every bit of juice manually, and unlike some other squeezers, juice never explodes into my eyes. The strainer filters out seeds and pulp, and when I’m done pressing, I simply tilt to pour the juice directly into my glass, jigger, or mixing bowl. Clean up is easy; it breaks down into three parts, all of which are dishwasher-safe. And the wide-mouth design fits just about anything. From lemons to grapefruits, nothing stands a chance against this thing—not even pomegranates.
Sure, it’s too big to tuck away in Andy’s citrus squeezer drawer, but I don’t mind showcasing its vintage beauty on my kitchen shelf. It’s timeless and sturdy, up for the task of private dinners, pop-up events, and, yes, my morning glass of juice. From lime juice for margaritas to pomegranate juice for glazed roast chicken, it’s been one of my most reliable pieces of kitchen equipment for years. I can only recommend the test kitchen get one as well.