Four factors determine if a juicer is easy to clean or not:
- Is the juicer dishwasher safe or not?
- Does the juicer have any particularly difficult to clean parts?
- What is the quality of the cleaning tools included with the juicer?
- Does the juicer stain easily?
Contents
Dishwasher safe juicers are easier to clean
Most centrifugal juicers can be washed in the dishwasher – they’re dishwasher safe .Most slow (cold press) juicers have to be washed by hand – they’re not dishwasher safe.For this reason, centrifugal juicers tend to be easier to clean than slow juicers. And so, if you’re looking for a juicer that’s easy to clean, we would tend to recommend a centrifugal juicer over any particular slow juicer.
But what about slow (masticating) juicers? How do you clean them?
Well, you have to hand wash most of them. Hand washing a slow juicer involves three steps:-
- Soaking parts in warm water and mild detergent
- Running each part under warm water and scrubbing it with included tools
- Rinsing each part with warm/cool water and air/towel drying it
During testing, we also hand washed centrifugal juicers to see just how long it would take to wash them compared to other juicer types.
This is how long it took us to complete all three hand washing steps above for all of the different types of juicers we tested:
| Approximate Time | |
|---|---|
| Centrifugal | 4 minutes |
| Horizontal Masticating | 5 minutes |
| Vertical Masticating | 6 minutes |
| Tribest GSE | 9 minutes |
| Champion | 9 minutes |
Difficulty in cleaning the parts
Slow juicers
The best way to differentiate between the cleaning difficulty of one slow juicer vs another is to compare the design of each juicer’s juicing strainer.
Why? Because the juicing strainer is the most difficult to clean part of any slow juicer.
Solostar 4 strainer with lots of edges.
NC800 strainer with few edges.
Juicing strainers that are difficult to clean have a lot of corners where plastic meets metal. These corners fill up with pulp and have to be scrubbed one at a time in order to ensure that pulp is removed from them properly. Scrubbing the corners one at a time takes hard work (repeated scrubbing and a lot of force is required) and a lot of time.
Strainers that are easier to clean have very few corners or no corners at all. For example, the NC800’s strainer has only two edges (where plastic and metal meet) that can be scrubbed and cleaned much more easily and much more quickly than the 48 corners of the Tribest Solostar 4’s juicing strainer.
Cleaning tool quality
Centrifugal juicers
The robust cleaning brush included with Breville centrifugal juicers.
Earlier we mentioned how centrifugal juicers are generally easier to clean than slow juicers if only because most centrifugal juicers can be cleaned in the dishwasher while most slow juicers cannot.
But what if you’re trying to compare the cleaning difficult of one centrifugal juicer to another centrifugal juicer? Are they all equally easy to clean because they all can just be washed in a dishwasher just the same? Yes and no.
The answer is yes if all parts are cleaned properly in the dishwasher.
The answer is no if all parts are not. And depending on what you’re juicing, one part in particular – the juicer’s filter basket – is highly unlikely to be cleaned properly in the dishwasher.
The filter basket is the part of the juicer that does all of the processing – turning whole produce into juice. The blades of the basket cut into the produce and the surrounding mesh of the basket separates the extracted liquid juice from the remaining dried pulp of the produce.
Cleaning the Breville Compact’s filter basket with the included brush.
There are a myriad of different tiny blades at the center of the basket and 100s of tiny holes in the surrounding mesh of the basket. A unique tool is required to be able to scrub the sharp blades at the center of the basket while still being able to unclog the 100s of tiny holes of the surrounding mesh of the basket.
Most manufacturers recognize that you’re unlikely to have such a tool lying around your kitchen so they include a cleaning brush for the sole purpose of cleaning the juicer’s filter basket.
The quality of this brush – not the design of the filter basket – makes one centrifugal juicer easier to clean vs another.
For example, all Breville centrifugal juicers come with the same high quality highly durable cleaning brush. This brush is of a higher quality than the brushes included with all other centrifugal juicers we tested. Thus we can say that, in general, Breville juicers are easier to clean than most other centrifugal juicers. For more in-depth comparisons of the brushes included with individual models please see our individual juicer reviews.
Slow juicers
An example of the type of cleaning brush you can expect to be included with a slow (cold press) juicer. This one was included with the Tribest Slowstar.
Most slow juicers come with a very similar quality brush with a very similar overall design. If you’re looking to compare the cleaning difficulty of slow juicers it’s more helpful to compare the complexity and design of individual parts, especially the juicing strainer (as we already did earlier). Cleaning tool quality is more of a differentiating factor with centrifugal juicers than it is with slow juicers.
Staining
Juicers tend to stain over time. Some juicers tend to stain more easily than others.
Generally, juicers with darker bodies and darker parts stain less easily if only because it’s more difficult to see stains on these darker parts. Conversely, juicers with lighter bodies and lighter parts stain more easily.
For example, the Tribest GSE with its white body and white parts stains quite easily. The Omega NC800 with its dark body and black plastic parts barely stains at all.
A white juicer like the GSE stains easily when juicing produce like carrots.
A darker juicer like the NC800 is much more difficult to stain.
Note that, for the most part, stains can be removed by soaking parts in a vinegar/water solution. However, it’s virtually impossible to soak the body of a juicer, and sometimes parts will stain badly enough so that the staining is impossible to remove (even with soaking, etc.).
If you’re at all concerned about staining we advise you to buy a juicer with a dark body and dark parts.
Picking the easiest to clean juicers – other considerations
Below we list three juicers we believe are the three best easiest to clean juicers currently on the market. In making these recommendations we stress cleaning difficulty but we also take into account.
- Juicing performance – yield
- Preparation time and difficulty
- Overall ease of use
- Durability and
- Value
Top 3 easiest to clean juicers
#1 – Breville Juice Fountain Compact
The Breville Juice Fountain Compact, like most other centrifugal juicers, is, for the most part, dishwasher safe. This makes it very easy to clean. The Compact also has one less part to clean than all the other Breville juicers we tested. One less part to clean makes it even easier to clean than those juicers.
The Compact lands #1 on this list for two reasons: 1. It’s a centrifugal juicer and is therefore mostly dishwasher safe. 2. It’s the best centrifugal juicer we tested. The Compact is a great value at approx. $100, outperforming other centrifugal juicers double, even triple its price. It provides terrific yields in all categories, is very easy to use, and is highly durable as well.
#2 – Omega NC800
The NC800 is the best most easy to clean slow juicer we tested.
It’s the best because it’s a great performer in almost all categories. It provides terrific yields, is highly versatile, and highly durable as well. Not to mention the fact that it comes with a 15 year warranty.
It’s the most easy to clean (non dishwasher safe) slow juicer we tested due to its dark body and black plastic parts. These parts are highly resistant to staining and clean up quite easily. The juicer’s strainer has a minimal number of corners which makes it quick and easy to scrub clean.
#3 – Kuvings NJE
The Kuvings NJE is one of only two slow juicers we tested with parts that are mostly dishwasher safe. The only part that’s not dishwasher safe is the juicer’s strainer which has to be scrubbed clean with the included cleaning brush. Note that dishwasher safe parts have to be placed in the top rack and low temperature operation of the dishwasher is recommended by the manufacturer.
We rate the Kuvings below the Omega because it’s a much worse performer than the Omega in almost all categories but this one (cleaning difficulty). Most importantly, the Omega gets higher yields out of juicing most types of produce and is also the much more durable (better built and of higher quality parts) juicer of the two. The Kuvings also only comes with a 5 year warranty while the Omega comes with a 15 year warranty.
If you’re deciding which way to go between these two juicers we would strongly advise that you go with the Omega unless you absolutely must buy a juicer that’s dishwasher safe and you’re limiting yourself only to slow juicers.
Note: the Hamilton Beach 67950A was the only other slow juicer we tested with dishwasher safe parts. However, like the Kuvings its build quality is quite low. It was also a terrible performer in all of our juicing tests (low yield). It is generally not recommended and so it is not recommended here.