Mango Passion Fruit Juice

Looking for that refreshing combination to cool down your day? This mango passion fruit juice is the perfect combination of sweet, tart, and refreshing.

I grew up having the benefit of being able to go outside and pick our own fruits to make juices.

We had just about any tropical fruit you could think of. From varying mangos (Julie, ice cream, starchy) to cherries, pommerac, oranges, grapefruits, pommecythere, passion fruit, pomelos/shaddock, and a few more.

Juice combinations ran from plain old single fruit to combinations made up of whatever was in season at the time.

One great combination is mango and passion fruit. I mean even Starbucks has its own mango passion fruit drink.

This is a refreshing drink with no artificial flavors. Fresh combination with tropical flavor to entice your taste buds.

A combination of sweet, from the ripe mango, and tart from the passion fruit.

Great fruit combinations make for such refreshing drinks.

Another favorite is this pineapple and cucumber juice. Pure freshness.

What is passion fruit?

This fruit is also known as grenadille, maracujá, maracuya or lilikoi and sometimes written as passionfruit.

Passion fruit can either be yellow or purple in color and is found growing on a vine. I grew up mainly with the yellow ones.

It has this very tart taste. Some may say even sour. The riper it gets though, the sweeter it becomes.

The interior of the fruit is what is eaten. It's a pulpy inside filled with seeds.

I know people are sometimes concerned with the seeds but they can be eaten with no recourse. Ask my toddler.

Passion fruits are filled with antioxidants and are known to have multiple amounts of beta carotene.

Nutritional benefits of mango

And then we want to include the best ever fruit, mangoes.

Varieties of these are in the thousands. And the benefits of mangoes are endless.

Mangoes, among other benefits, include:

• help with digestion
• promote a healthy gut and eye health
• clears the skin
• lowers cholesterol
• aids with clearing the skin from blemishes

How to select the best mangoes?

For this recipe, we want to get the mango at the sweetest point so that will be a ripe mango. Almost like what we would use to make mango ice cream.

A ripe mango should be gently squeezed to test if it is soft. Not firm and hard.

It needs to give slightly when you touch the skin like what happens with ripe peaches.

I try to avoid stringy mangoes for this drink. But you can use them. You will just need to strain them out to get the juice and less string.

Ingredients for making passion fruit mango juice

The best ingredients for this juice need to be fresh fruit.

• Fresh mango pulp.
• Passion fruit pulp.
• Water.
• Sugar.
• Angostura bitters.

Equipment and tools

For this recipe it would be good to have a:

• Sieve of some type. This could be a regular strainer (what I use) or cheesecloth.
• A good non-reactive bowl to catch the juices that have been strained. I don't like using plastic containers because they sometimes retain the smell of the last thing you stored in there.
• A good blender of some sort. It doesn't have to be a big brand blender. In fact, my ninja blender worked fine mixing the pulp of the mango.

Making mango passion fruit juice

Wash your mangoes and passion fruits. We are not going to use the skin or the shells but we do want to not have any debris or dirt in our area.

Cut the passion fruits in half and scoop out the fresh passion fruit pulp and seeds. We are trying to get 1/2 cup.

Add the pulp to a fine-mesh sieve and using a spoon, stir to strain the liquid through. Save some of the seeds for garnish.

Remove the meat of the mango from the skin and seeds. Blend the pulp with enough water so that your blender does not stick. You do not want it to be too runny.  


Once blended, combine the mango pulp and the passion fruit juice.

Add water to the juice mixture and add sugar. Adjust to taste as this can vary depending on how sweet your fruits are.

Add the bitters and put to chill.

Best served chilled, and you can use passion fruit seeds as a garnish at the base of the glass.

Substitutes | Additions

• Even though I prefer using fresh fruits to make these drinks if you don't have access to the fresh there are brands that sell the pulp all ready for you to use.
  
  You can find numerous pulp products including frozen passion fruit pulp and mango pulp. They are sold in Walmart and in a lot of supermarkets found in large Caribbean communities.

• Want a nice frozen drink? Try making this combination using the frozen concentrate. Perfect for sitting poolside.

• Add a little rum to have a mango passion fruit rum cocktail to transport you to a tropical vacation.

Tips for making mango passion fruit juice

• The best way to get the juice from the passion fruit is to simply strain the pulp with a spoon.

• Passion fruit can be tart, make sure your mango is not green and acid to taste.

• Use granulated sugar to not distort the color of the juices.
  
  

Grab these other refreshing Caribbean drinks this summer:

• Soursop drink
• Ultimate fruit punch
• Pineapple and cucumber juice
• Cucumber juice
• Ginger pineapple lemonade