I made this one for the end of a long walk rather than for a breakfast. Dates will sweeten half a litre of juice on their own, and they bring a caramel depth that apple never manages by itself, so there is no honey, no agave and no sugar jar involved. It comes out thick and golden rather than thin and green, and it is the closest thing on this site to a real energy drink, because that is honestly all it is: carbohydrate, potassium and a bit of ginger heat.
One thing to get out of the way first. You cannot put a date through a juicer. It is a dried fruit with almost no water left in it, so the blades turn it into paste and the pulp blocks the basket. Soaking and blending is how date juice is made commercially too, so this recipe soaks the dates in just-boiled water, blends them with that water and then stirs the result into the apple, ginger and lemon juice.
Why these ingredients work
Dates are doing the sweetening and the substance. A single Medjool date carries around 167 mg of potassium and 16 g of sugar, so three of them is a real carbohydrate hit rather than a flavour, and the potassium is part of why a glass of this feels better than the same calories from a biscuit. The glycaemic side is genuinely better than the sugar content suggests: the Alkaabi trial in Nutrition Journal (2011, 10:59) measured five date varieties at a glycaemic index of 46 to 55 in healthy volunteers and 43 to 53 in people with type 2 diabetes, and four weeks of eating them did not shift fasting glucose in the diabetic group. What that study does not do is rescue the portion size. A low index and a lot of sugar at once are two different things, and three dates plus two apples is a lot of sugar at once.
The ginger is mainly there to stop the glass tasting like a dessert, and it earns its place twice over, because ginger is the best evidenced thing in the drink for a queasy stomach (Viljoen et al., Nutrition Reviews, 2014). The lemon does the same job from the other direction, cutting through the sweetness so you can drink the whole glass without wincing, and the apples give it the volume and the fresh acidity. The water is not filler either. Dates bring no liquid of their own, so without it you have a purée rather than a drink.
I am not going to tell you this cures tiredness. If you are tired most days, that is a conversation with your GP about sleep, iron and thyroid, not something a glass of juice settles. What this is good for is the specific, honest job of putting carbohydrate and potassium into you quickly before or after something energetic.
FAQ
Can you juice dates in a juicer?
No, and it is worth knowing why rather than wasting a batch. Dates are about 70 per cent sugar and very little water, so a juicer has nothing to press out of them and the fruit simply gums up the mesh. Soak them in hot water until they soften, blend them with that water, then strain if you want a clear glass. The soaking water goes into the drink, so do not pour it down the sink.
How much sugar is in a glass of date juice?
About 37 g in this one, which is a shade more than a 330 ml can of Coke. That is not a flaw in the recipe, it is what dates are, and it is the reason I treat this as a drink for before a run, a long walk or a gym session rather than something to sip at your desk all afternoon. If you want it lighter, drop to two dates and add the juice of another half lemon, which takes it to roughly 25 g and still tastes sweet.
Do you have to soak the dates first?
Yes, for about 15 minutes in just-boiled water. Dry dates blended straight into cold juice stay gritty and leave little lumps of skin in the glass, and no amount of extra blending fixes that properly. Soaking also means the fruit gives up its sweetness to the water, which is the liquid you are drinking. Medjool dates are the soft ones and they soften fastest; the dry chopped dates sold for baking need longer and give a grainier result.
More energy recipes: see the full Energy collection.
Date, Apple and Ginger Juice
Equipment
- 1 Juicer any masticating juicer handles apple and ginger easily
- 1 Budget cold press juicer the cheaper option, feed the ginger in with an apple quarter so it does not bounce
- 1 High-speed blender for turning the soaked dates into a smooth paste
- 1 Budget blender works fine here, just blend the dates for longer
- 1 Nut milk bag for straining the date pulp if you want a clear juice
- 1 Airtight glass bottles keeps for two days in the fridge, shake before pouring
Ingredients
For the juice
- 3 Medjool dates about 70 g, stoned and roughly chopped. The soft large ones, not the dry chopped dates sold for baking
- 2 crisp sweet apples about 300 g, skin on, quartered and cored
- 1 small knob fresh ginger about 15 g, scrubbed rather than peeled
- ½ unwaxed lemon peel left on
- 200 ml water 150 ml just boiled for soaking the dates, the rest cold for the blender method
Instructions
Juicer method
- Stone the dates and chop them roughly, then cover them with 150 ml of just-boiled water and leave them for 15 minutes. They need to be soft enough to squash between your fingers. Keep the soaking water, it goes into the glass with them.
- While they soak, put the apples, ginger and lemon through the juicer. Start with an apple because it wets the basket and carries the ginger through with it.
- Tip the dates and their soaking water into a blender and blitz for 30 to 45 seconds, until you have a smooth dark paste with no lumps of skin left in it.
- Stir the date paste into the juice. For a clear glass rather than a cloudy one, pour the whole thing through a fine sieve or a nut milk bag and press the pulp with the back of a spoon, then bin what stays in the bag.
- Taste it and squeeze in a little more lemon if it is sweeter than you want. Drink it straight away, or bottle it and keep it in the fridge for up to two days, shaking before you pour.
Blender method
- Chop the apples, roughly chop the ginger and cut the lemon half into quarters, peel and all.
- Put the soaked dates and their water in the blender with the apples, ginger and lemon, add another 100 ml of cold water and blend on high for a full minute.
- Pour it through a nut milk bag or a fine sieve set over a jug, squeezing the pulp to get everything out, then bin the pulp.
- Chill it and drink it the same day. It settles as it stands, so give the bottle a shake before you pour.