Lots of us have lots of blender love to give — protein shakes and smoothies are much more enjoyable when made with a good blender.
The important thing, like any other appliance, is to match the good qualites of the type of tool you’re using with the particular use you want to make of it right now. A tool is only a good tool when it does a good enough job of what you’re needing it for.
Here are the basic blender applications, along with the type of tool that’s made for it.
1. Turning undifferentiated raw, solid vegetables into refreshing, pulpy juice. For this you may as well go directly to the $400, turn-a-tree-limb-into-juice machines, because nothing else will do this. I say pulpy because if you don’t want the pulp you may as well buy a juicer as try to extract the juice from the pulpy mix a blender is going to give you. In that $400 category you’ll find the VitaMix and a couple of other competitors that will do anything you might ever want done as far as blending, and will spin the liquid fast enough to warm it up for direct use as soup. But do consider if you’ll be getting your $400 worth … that’s 100 large bottles of pre-made vegetable juice from your grocer. If you decide it’s worth it, here’s my big cash savings tip of the day. You can sign up for Bed, Bath and Beyond’s email list and receive a 20% off coupon right now, and when you use it, they’ll send you more coupons, and if you use them, they’ll send you *more* coupons. I am a major fan of BB&B and you’ll never see me buying there without a coupon or price match.
2. For the rest of us who aren’t going to sink a college class tuition into a blender, there are good, general purpose blenders available in the $40 range … Consumer Reports has a crush on Oster in this category, and I pretty much agree. They’re probably not going to turn ice into snow, and they tend to be a little on the disposable end of things. If your freezer makes crushed ice, this is going to be a great smoothie machine.
3. There’s a hybrid between disposable and tree stump grinders — represented by Cuisinart and KitchenAid. If you’ve been following me for awhile you’ll know these are the only brands you’ll find in my kitchen, because they are sturdy and will have replacement parts available for a long time. These will set you back about $100 and will indeed turn ice into snow.
4. If you’re the kind of person who makes several different shakes all through the day, the more personal-sized machines with multiple cups are nice. Speaking of Cuisinart, BB&B has $20 mail in rebate on a 15 piece example of this genre, which you can use above-mentioned 20% off of coupon on, and thus for the list price $60 item you’re down to $32. Glory.
5. If you sometimes wish you could blend something up directly in the cooking or serving vessel, you may like a stick blender. It’s going to be irritating for any other use, though, so think about how often you’re going to use it.
6. Then there’s the interesting space age gadget category. Run away.
7. And finally, there’s the one-motor, many-items category. I find this hugely appealing, logically beautiful (why buy 4 very similar motors to spin 4 different devices?) and just totally unworkable, after trying twice. I want this to work, I really do. Maybe someday. But right now a motor with continuously adjustable RPMs, with enough gumption to juice carrots but enough gentle mixing love to make creme brulee, remains evasive.
There’s a brief rundown of the available choices, and a few representative manufacturers in some of the areas. Happy blending!
The Not Big Anymore, Formerly Fat Guy 