Blendtec (after 3 weeks of use)

Kids, don't try this at home

Giving a woman a blender for her birthday can result in tears, someone sleeping on a couch, and even broken off engagements.  At least, that's what I was able to garner from Hollywood movies.  But in our family, a blender is not a symbol of outdated domesticity; it's a symbol of freedom.  A good blender means freedom to transform virtually any ingredient into perfect smoothness without the elbow grease of straining through a fine mesh, re-blending, and re-straining.  What can be sexier than that?

The question was not whether I wanted a blender or perfume for my birthday.  The question was Vitamix or Blendtec.  Every molecular gastronomy book I've read endorsed Vitamix.  Every professional chef I knew was happy using Vitamix.  Cook's Illustrated reported that Vitamix was indeed a super-blender and Blendtec choked on ice.  It took me months to decide that a mere blender was worth $400.  But I finally made my decision and asked Jason for a Vitamix.

How did I end up with a Blendtec after all that research?  I saw a demo of it at Costco.  It handled ice with no issues.  Raw kale was pureed smoothly enough that it masqueraded as mint in an ice-cream.  It seemed to do everything Vitamix was doing for $100 cheaper.  The only thing I found disturbing were the electronics and cycle buttons.  I was buying a blender, not a laptop.  From my experience, electronics in the kitchen don't last long.  Besides, who needs "soup," "ice-cream," and "smoothie" buttons?  Can't I just turn it on and adjust the speed?  The good news was that there were normal speed buttons, so I could just ignore the gimmicky cycles.  As far as that LCD screen going toast?  There was a 7 year warranty.  What was the harm in try it?  If I didn't like it, Costco would take it back; and if I did like it, we'd save $100.

After 3 weeks with Blendtec, someone would have to pry this machine out of my cold dead hands for me to part with it.  I love it and I have a confession to make.  Surprisingly, those gimmicky cycle buttons work better than my own speed adjustments.  My first test was a lentil soup.  Any blender can turn butternut squash into a smooth puree, but lentils posed a real challenge with their pesky little skins.  The soup button turned my lentil soup into a puree so smooth, I couldn't find even the tiniest specs of skin.  The parsley puree came out completely smooth with no straining required.  The plum "sorbet" I made with frozen peeled plums using the ice-cream cycle was a huge hit.  So that you don't get your hopes up about making real sorbet or ice-cream with a blender, let me explain.  The texture was like a thick slushy, not really like sorbet, but it was smooth, creamy, and cold.  To help it out in the smoothness department, I removed the skins from the plums before freezing them.  Since the friction of the blade heats up the food, it's good not to give it more than it can chew for cold preparations.  If I was making a plum syrup, I bet I could throw the skins right in.

Blackberries were my next challenge.  I dumped a pint of them into the blender with a bit of agave syrup to make a blackberry sauce.  The blackberry seeds got broken down into tiny pieces but were still noticeable and unpleasant.  After straining, most of the unpleasant grittiness got removed, but some bits were tiny enough to make it through a fine mesh sieve.  At this point the sauce wasn't gritty, but had a slightly muddy texture.  As long as the sauce was used as a garnish, this problem was not noticeable, but I wouldn't call it a perfect puree if I had a large spoonful of it.

The last test seemed a bit crazy, but since this blender should in theory be able to blend credit cards, I thought I'll give fish frames a shot.  I would normally strain them out when making a Provencal Soup de Poisson.  But in the interest of testing the blender and increasing our family's calcium consumption, I left them in.  Blendtec chopped them up into tiny bits making the soup very prickly.  That problem was solved relatively easily by straining through a fine mesh, but getting all those tiny pesky bones out of the strainer was not fun.  I don't think I'll be pureeing any more fish bones.

Any Vitamix owners out there?  How does Vitamix do with blackberries?  I doubt anyone out there is pureeing fish bones, but if you are, drop me a line and we'll start a fish head-to-tail eating club.

A few words about clean up.  Although it does take more space to dry Blendtec than my immersion blender, it doesn't take much more effort to clean it.  Just rinse, fill with 2 cups of water and a drop of soap and blend for 20 seconds or so.  Do that on low speed unless you'd like a soapy explosion on your counter.  Rinse and you are done.  Will I be getting rid of my immersion blender?  No way.  I still want it for tiny quantities of 1/2 cup or less, but for most applications, I am now using Blendtec.

So far so good.  The question is how will the electronics hold up.  I'll try to make follow up posts in 6-12 months to report how my Blendtec is doing.