V8 100% Vegetable Juice - An Underappreciated Ingredient
Written: Sep 25 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: versatile. healthy. some people like the taste
Cons: I don't like the taste by itself.
The Bottom Line: Even those who don't like the taste of V8 straight may find it useful to keep around
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| naphtalia's Full Review: V8 100% Vegetable Juice, 46 Oz |
I had to laugh the other day when a friend dropped a bit over $3.50 on a bottle of some trendy Naked Juice or Boathouse mixed vegetable drink. Don't get me wrong. I tend to like most of these drinks. When it comes to mixed vegetable drinks, however, I think people are missing out by not going with the grand daddy of them all - V-8.
While I'm not a fan of V-8 for drinking, most of my family is. A small juice glass, sometimes with a splash of lemon juice, was often served at our house as an appetizer. V-8 is a 100% vegetable juice. V is for vegetables and 8 is for the vegetables it contains. These are: tomatoes, carrots, celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, watercress and spinach.
An 11.5 ounce can of V-8 contains 70 calories, 3 g of fiber, 11 g of sugar, 690 mg of sodium, 670 mg of potassium, 14g of total carb. The vitamin breakdown is 60% RDA of Vitamin A, 170% RDA of Vitamin C, 4% RDA of Calcium, and 4% RDA of Iron. One of the big advertising pushes with V-8 is that a can replaces a serving of vegetables.
On its own, most of the folks I know like it served chilled or at room temperature. I seem to get good responses going with mom's old standard of a small chilled glass garnished with a lemon wedge.
While I'm not a fan of V-8 for drinking, I do use it for cooking. For rice recipes, I will replace up to a third of the cooking liquid with V-8. I will whip up a stick of butter with a 1/4 cup of V-8 and lots of fresh herbs. Then I will make a log and chill or freeze to create a tomato-herb compound butter.
If I don't want to open a can of tomato soup for a child, I will sometimes heat some V-8 in the microwave, stir in some milk and a little butter, then top the whole thing with some goldfish crackers or cheddar cheese and make "cream of tomato soup". I know friends who use V-8 with a little fresh grated horseradish and some celery seed as a bloody mary mix.
I've also used V-8 mixed with Italian salad dressing to make a new kind of salad dressing. The list of possible cooking uses goes on. Perhaps the most clever I've seen was a friend who mixed a can with a bit of simple syrup and lemon juice then froze it in a low pan. As it froze kept scraping it with a fork until she had a "V-8 Granita" to serve between courses. It was a huge hit as a palette cleanser.
For someone who can't stand the taste of the stuff on its own, I find a buy a lot of it. V-8 is convenient because it comes in everything from tiny juice cans to 11.5 oz cans to big 46 ounce bottles. I do find the quality degrades after it's exposed to air for any real length of time, so I will usually open the smallest container that serves my purposes. Whatever I don't use in a day or two, I will freeze in an ice-cube tray for use later.
Don't ask me to drink this stuff, but you have to know I'll happily cook with it. And serve it to others....There's a reason that this stuff has been around so long. It's a classic. I'll bet that in 20 years a lot of the Naked Juices won't be around anymore, but V-8 will still be with us.
Recommended:
Yes
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naphtalia
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Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the_circus has left town.
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