Which Orange Juice is best?

Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Toothpaste before orange juice, DEAD. Luckily no one had just brushed their teeth before our orange juice taste test. FYI, that combination tastes so bad, because toothpaste blocks your mouth’s sweet receptors, and inhibits your mouth’s ability to block bitter tastes. Therefore, DEAD. More reading here if you’re super curious.

Orange juice is very popular. America drinks over 2.5 billion liters (or over 660 million gallons) a year! No wonder it was one of our first requests for drinks to taste test. People are also very passionate about whether there should be pulp in it or not.

In researching before the test, we found that when manufacturers make orange juice, they remove the pulp and then add it back in to achieve the varying levels of pulp. So since it all starts with the same amount of pulp: none, we chose to use No Pulp juices for our orange juice taste test. We likened it to starting with cheese pizza or creamy peanut butter; it’s the base, and then you can add in whatever you want according to your preference. To see how we keep all of our taste tests unbiased, please click here. It also lists all of our taste tests (showdowns) we’ve held, to date!

Once we knew what level of pulp to test, we had to figure out what brands to test… and whether or not to include fresh-squeezed. While we usually don’t include homemade foods, since it’s so hard for people to recreate the same “experience” and flavors at their home, orange juice is different. We literally hand-squeezed a bunch of navel oranges and ran it through a very fine strainer to remove pulp. We added nothing! You can do that at home. 

And by including fresh-squeezed, it’ll answer the question of whether it’s worth it to squeeze your own, or just buy the pre-bottled orange juice. After all, that is why we started The Food Showdown; to know which food is best!

The contenders:

Below are the brands we taste tested, in order of least to most expensive. The number below the image is the price per ounce.

Minute Maid

Minute Maid Concentrate

Tropicana

Safeway

Simply Orange

Fresh Squeezed/Homemade

You’ll notice that the fresh-squeezed price is N/A. That’s because in order to have enough for an 11-panelist orange juice taste test, we had to buy oranges from multiple places, all at different price points. We were holding the orange juice taste test over a holiday, and the grocery stores closed. And the bag of oranges we assumed would be enough was not. So we had to drive around to lots of smaller stores, buying one or two oranges at a time, as that was all they had. You get some strange looks trying to buy oranges not at a grocery store.

If you are lucky enough to buy at one place, then your price per ounce would be steady. But our price was fluid (<-get it? ), depending on which orange was being squeezed. And we don’t know exactly how much juice was squeezed from each orange. But to give you an idea, we spent almost $16 dollars to make a little less juice than what we were buying for around $3 from the store. (If not on a holiday it would have been somewhat cheaper, but still drastically more.) That’s some expensive orange juice!! It better be worth it.

Before the results, we want to say that this was a hard taste test. So many panelists commented on just how similar they all were. Fresh-squeezed OJ was the most different, and the contender that people were able to guess what “brand” it was most consistently. But would that mean it was their favorite…

Orange Juice Taste Test Results:

The letter corresponds to the placeholder during the test. You can see how each fared point-wise, in the picture below the results.

6 – Safeway (B)

5 – Tropicana (A)

4 – Minute Maid (F)

3 – Homemade (C)

2 – Simply Orange (E)

And the winner is:

1 – Minute Maid Concentrate (D)

WHOA! Concentrate?!? Absolutely no one guessed that the concentrate would have won. Don’t you feel like concentrate has gotten such a bad wrap? …or at least people like to make fun of and look down on it… mainly by intensely staring at the container. (Ba Dum Tsss)

Insights:

If you look at the point totals below, if you can read my chicken scratch, you’ll see the concentrate (D) wasn’t just squeaking by either. In fact, we almost had a 3-way tie for last place, and it had a healthy lead.

– While Tropicana (A) didn’t come in last (it was one point away from last), not a single person voted it as their first place. I guess sticking a straw in an orange isn’t that good, huh? OH, SNAP! This might be the first time a brand didn’t get one, 1st place vote. There’s usually at least one panelist that will vote what ends up in last place as their first. You can see Safeway (B) kept that streak alive!

– This might be the lowest Safeway has ever scored. They usually are ranked in the top half, for example: potato chips and peanut butter.

– Fresh-Squeezed/ homemade was the most polarizing. While it came in third and tied for the most first place votes, it also got the most last place votes. So maybe not worth the extra money and work… you might end up not liking it. But you could always try it with a smaller batch.

Here are some of our panelists comments for each brand.

Minute Maid: sweet yet bland / fake? / sweet / lightest orange flavor / good

Minute Maid Concentrate: sweet / good / watery / fuller flavor / foamy / thick flavor / smooth

Tropicana: bland / sour / tangy / watery / good orange flavor / slightly sour / not sweet / minimal orange taste

Safeway: very sweet / too sweet / watery / aftertaste :/ / subtle taste / deepest orange / smooth

Simply Orange: best smell / bland / weak / meh / less orange / bite? / sweet

Fresh-Squeezed/Homemade: sour / tastes like real oranges / poop emoji / sour / most like unchanged oranges / tart / tangy / best orange taste / different… / bitter

These comments are interesting, because it shows that the sweeter orange juices didn’t fare as well as the sour/bitter ones. However the fresh squeezed got a lot of sour/bitter comments, so it must be what we humans like about orange juice! Just not too bitter, because DEAD.

Something to try: 

Though not tested in our orange juice taste test, I heard of a “life hack:” Make orange juice from concentrate, and then squeeze an orange into it right before serving. As some of the comments on the fresh squeezed was that it tasted the most like an orange, this might have some merit.

What are your thoughts? Comment if we missed a brand, or if you agree with our panelists. Orange you glad you know what orange juice to drink now? Drink happy!