Experimenting with V8 Juice

I’ve always been a reluctant vegetable eater, so over the years I’ve needed to be creative in how I got them into me. Of course, this whole “low-residue” thing has thrown a spanner into how I used to do this. Most veg are on the “no-go” list now, and although I generally prefer veg raw, that is now out of the question. I never actually thought I would see the day when I began to miss vegetables. Well, actually, I don’t miss vegetables, I miss variety.

Either way, a lot of Crohnie types swear by “juicing” their veg. I’m not sold on this idea as I’m not plunking down £400 on the Vitamix Juicer everyone recommends http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vitamix-TNC-Black-010231-Blender/dp/B005KQ2TYO/ref=sr_1_1?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1397419578&sr=1-1&keywords=vitamix. If I’m going to spend £400 on kitchen porn stuff, I’m going to spend it on this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/KitchenAid-Artisan-KSM150BOB-Stand-Mixer/dp/B000094U5F/ref=sr_1_3?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1397419740&sr=1-3&keywords=kitchenaid+mixer

So, in an attempt to find some way to work with this, I thought I would try out cooking with V8 juice. Now I know those of you who do juicing will be barking about this because of the salt content of V8 juice, but I really can’t justify buying a juicer. And £1.69 was a better cost to experiment with than £400.

One thought that I would use my trusty tomato soup recipe with V8. Here’s what I did -

I melted 1 tbsp of dairy free margarine in a saucepan, then stirred in 2 tsp of plain flour. I then added 1 cup of V8 juice and 1/4 cup of water. I brought it to a boil, and boiled it for 2 minutes while stirring with a whisk. Then I added 2 tsp of sugar, a dash of sea salt and a dash of pepper.

I’ve discovered that V8 is much sweeter than the plain tomato juice I use in the recipe (probably the beet root in it), so I really didn’t need the sugar, or at least not so much. ½ tsp probably would have been enough to cut the acidity. And V8 juice is bloody salty, I really didn’t need the extra salt. Overall, it was okay, but nothing to write home about, and really, I prefer my tomato soup instead.

Trying to decide what else I could do with the rest of carton, I search V8 recipes, and amongst the many recipes for making homemade V8, I found that the company has a whole website of recipes of stuff you can make with it - http://www.v8juice.com/recipes.aspx

So I tried the Cajun Chicken Fettuccine recipe here - http://www.v8juice.com/RecipeDetail.aspx?recipeId=24923&catId=851

I had to adapt it a bit, especially as I was only making it for me. I didn’t have Fettuccine noodles, so just used penne. And not having any Cajun spice, I kind of had to make my own. And I had some leftover chicken from roasting one last Sunday, so I just used that rather than cooking chicken especially for the recipe.

Here’s what I did. I boiled the pasta as one would. In a measuring cup, I mixed ½ tbsp of plain flour, ½ cup of V8 juice and various seasonings to make Cajun spice. Not really knowing what to do with that, I scoured around and adapted this one - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/simple-cajun-seasoning/. So I pretty much just used several dashes of salt, dash of oregano, dash of paprika, dash of cayenne pepper and a few dashes of fresh ground black pepper. As I can’t use onions, I also added onion powder.

I chopped some of the leftover chicken and put it in a saucepan, and covered it with the V8 mixture. I left out the green pepper the recipe called for. I cooked it on medium-high until the mixture boiled and thickened, stirring frequently.

 
Then I put the cover on and turned it down to a simmer while the pasta finished cooking.

It turned okay. Ish. Possibly if I had put more spice in it, it would have been nicer, but generally, it was just really bland and tasted like, well, V8 juice poured over chicken and pasta. I don’t think I will try this one again.

So I can’t say that these experiments have been a success. Really, I suspect that the Arrogant Worms had it right about veg all along.