My sister has been on at me to get a smoothie maker. This partly as I have some stomach lining damage to sort out and I envisage a sort of super smoothie with all the good stuff in it. But…but. I hate buying more shiny kit for the kitchen that never gets used. Any views, experience here?
ATM Smoothies
by 63 Comments
I have fruit smoothie every morning. Smoothie makers are brill. Easy to use, easy to wash, what’s not to like?
We have a smoothie maker, it is a bugger to clean, and dried smoothie sets like cement. So get one which is low-maintenance.
Why is it “a bugger to clean”? That totally contradicts everything I’ve ever said on this thread regarding the subject of cleaning them.
I use, pour, rinse out immediately and it’s ready to go the next day. I understand you not.
Ours comes with two bottles with screw-on lids, and the bottles then get put in the fridge for consuming later. I would need a right-angled washing up brush to clean the neck of the bottle.
I can see the sense in your method, unfortunately the consumers of the smoothies in my house don’t use it like that.
{Edith} it’s one of these, more or less:
My computer won’t let me view that photo. Probably because I have the NSFW blocker activated. I don’t know why you have to bother with the palaver of bottle attachments. That sounds like the very definition of fascism. Mine looks like this and I simply pour into a pint glass.
Can’t read the make there Gal, what is it?
That’s not actually mine. Looks like mine though. The ones that look like that are all pretty much the same, I believe.
Mine is actually this one:
https://www.franzysonline.it/dcg-frullatore-1-5lt-da-300w.html
€20! Why are we even having this discussion for €20? Why, I often spend more than that on a mere 3 minutes of truly sordid pleasure, whereas a smoothie maker will outlast your heirs. Well worth it.
Stop calling me Gal.
That would be a breeze to wash up by comparison, er, Gaz.
What is it?
Search the dodgers for “Quest Personal Blender & Smoothie Maker | 350 Watt | Includes 2x 600ml Portable Bottles”
These days I am exercising great caution buying anything online with a made-up Chinglish brand name and a dodgy CE marking. Experience tells me that spare parts are never available, electrical jeopardy is usually high and reliability is, er, unreliable.
If it ain’t a Bosch or similar (probably made in China anyway, but with a well known brand name to protect) I’ll swerve the apparent value-for-money options on the dodgers in favour of actual value-for-money from John Lewis.
Have to say I agree and I’ve gone for the Breville. Possibility this because one of my favourite post pub foods was made in one BITD – the mighty cheese, beans and mango chutney toasted sandwich.
Yes, actually it was sourced from John Lewis and is a Kenwood branded, but it is the same style as the the one on Am*z*n above – a proper juicer with a necked bottle which, as Foxy says below, is a bugger to clean (which is where I came in).
I agree with this sentiment most of the time but three years ago my posh microwave blew up at 9pm and I went to KMart (open til midnight) and got a very cheap but surprisingly stylish-looking new one. It was about 75 quid in your money and it’s unbranded . It works fine and at least one visitor has said “that’s a nice microwave”. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Got a soup wand/hand blender which came with a smoothie attachment, I’ve just done a banana, apple and orange smoothie.
Very quick and easy.
Easy to clean too.
Yes got one of them. Never occurred to me you could made a smoothie with it, we just it for soup.
Those are great tools. My Braun one must be thirty years old, and still going strong. The white plastic is so old it’s faded to a bone yellow, but the little darling still whizzes enthusiastically.
Mrs thep brought a Bamix stick blender to the marriage – built like a tank, made in Switzerland, lifetime guarantee and also 30 years old give or take. This plus a very expensive juicer, also built like a tank and almost as heavy. These two meet all our fruit smashing needs.
Surely a decent little hand blender is a lot more useful than a “Smoothie Maker”
https://www.braunhousehold.com/en-gb/multiquick-1-hand-blender-mq10-001m-wh/p/MQ10.001MWH
I have an older model of this, which has served me well for about 20 years, with attachments to chop herbs etc. too.
Like this one but without the whisk attachment.
https://www.braunhousehold.com/en-gb/multiquick-3-hand-blender-mq-3025-spaghetti/p/4192-MQ3025WHSPAGHET
We use this model – I’m sure the equivalent is available in the UK (it’s a US designed one)….
https://aurablender.com.sg/
Very easy to use – just throw in some frozen fruit, some yoghurt, some orange juice or whatever and give it a whizz. To clean it’s just a rinse and then a drop of dishwashing liquid and whizz and it cleans itself.
I thank you for taking my side and standing firmly against fentonsteve in the brutal quarrel regarding cleaning the device, but… “frozen fruit”? WTF?
Well, whilst we have plenty of tropical fruits here, if I want strawberries, raspberries etc, the best way is a bag of frozen berries.
We do use plenty of fresh fruit in our smoothies though – all depends what it the fridge,
Smoothie Making for Beginners, Part 1 (of 17):
Buy fresh fruits, enough for two or three days of smoothies. My personal favourites (in no particular order): bananas, strawberries, peaches, apricots, nectarines.
Don’t let anyone else see them and don’t put them in the fridge. Put them somewhere cool and dry that nobody else knows about and keep them hidden until the next stage. But not in the fridge.
Smoothie Making for Beginners, Part 2 (of 17):
Cut up the fruit, discard any pips or nuts, bung it in the device, add some milk, plug it in, turn it on.
Cleaning the device is currently a contentious issue, one which I prefer not to comment further on having already made my position clear.
I suspect @fentonsteve may have been referring to the experience of cleaning a proper juicer rather than a simple blitzer/smoothie maker.
A few years back I acquired a Breville Antony Worrall Thompson JE15 Pro Juicer; a huge thing equipped with a monster motor, you could chuck entire apples, carrots and so on into the thing and out of the side would gush a finely smashed, filtered and very, very smooth flow of just juice.
Impressive.
But what was left in the fine steel mesh filter was all of the cellulose content of the fruit or veg, and THAT really was a bugger to clean. The beast even came with stiff little custom designed brushes with which to scrub the filter clean between juicings.
I gave it away.
This brought back a memory of this juicer we had in the 70s attached to a Kenwood chef.
You put a paper filter strip inside which caught the cellulose with no need to scrub a mesh filter. I tried with bananas once you can’t make banana juice but it did produce banana sludge.
Frozen berries and fresh bananas is what I do. Some milk and a little sugar too (not too much)
Half a banana, a handful of frozen berries, a handful of kale (tough stems removed), a spoonful of chia seed, a spoonful of peanut butter, oat milk. Maybe some cocoa powder and/or some ginger. Adjust according to what’s around and seasonal availability.
I wonder sometimes why we grew our hair long, took drugs and stuck it to The Man. Born to Be Smooth indeed.
You breakfast on raw cacti, I like to imagine.
Couple of croissants, black coffee, a snifter of pastis whilst reading Le Monde before taking the hunting dogs out to try and snare a couple of miscreant peasants. A perusal of Le Figaro, service my mistress then a three hour lunch. Another day in The Languedoc.
“Service my mistress then a three hour lunch …”
Which shows what a slender grasp you have on French culture (as well as “your mistress”). Lunch first, always, then a post-prandial nap in your mistress’s bed while she smokes and complains that you don’t lover her any more, or enough, or something. That is the true French way.
That’s my morning mistress. I could have carried on – “After a siesta walk the hundred metres to sample the delights ..”
Do you live in France, Lodes?
He lives in a semi-D in Staines, MC. Apparently it’s on one of the “better” streets, with a bay window giving onto the golf club car park. Fully UVPC double glazed, the ground floor has been “knocked through” to great effect, and the third bedroom converted into a mock “serial killer” den, complete with bloodstained polythene curtains, a rusty gynecologist’s chair, and a zinc acid bath – quite the talking point!
You forgot the fully-stocked bar in the far corner complete with a karaoke machine and a stuffed fish what laughs.
I didn’t want to put off potential visitors.
Ninja are rock solid.
We have this one. It’s great for humous type thick stuff as well.
https://amzn.eu/d/gKjinwG
What’s the point of eating fruit but removing all tbe cellulose? Nutritionists will tell you that that fibre is a large part of what makes eating the fruit healthy.
Unless you have, say, Crohn’s disease, like wot I has got. In which case fibre is deadly, and why I follow a LOFFLEX (Low Fibire, Low Fat, Limited Exclusion) diet.
Here’s the science bit. It doesn’t remove the cellulose but it does make it easier to digest and for the body to deal with it. Hence it being better for Crohn’s sufferers but, importantly, full of all the goodness unmushy fruit has.
Next week, why real sourdough bread is easier to digest for people with digestive problems….
Ah, but the Antony Worrall Thompson JE15 Pro Juicer I had DOES remove all or very nearly all of the cellulose. It has a ruddy massive motor that spins at stupid-per-minute the heck out of whatever the inbound razor sharp stainless teeth have mashed to hell and uses centripetal force to fling only the minutely filtered clear liquid component out into your waiting juice collection vessel. The HUGE majority of the cellulose content is trapped in said stainless steel mesh filter, hence explaining why the thing is, indeed, a BUGGER to clean. See above.
Point of order. The defendant is describing a juicer not a smoothie maker. Juice is fruit minus cellulose whereas smoothie is fruit with cellulose.
Have we invented DadsNet?
What a softie plea. Poor Walter wants his drinkies crystal clear. Where I come from cider is a drink you can’t see through; there are actual bits. Come to that, it’s a drink you can’t see after.
Cider is a drink for AbsentDadsNet.
Any fibre content is bad for Crohn’s sufferers*, however big the lumps are.
(*) or this one, at least.
Does that extend to broadband?
ATM smoothies? OMG.
We were all smoothies once.
Er …
I see you have gone for the Breville so this recommendation is too late. But since I took the pics and created an imgur link I’ll post anyway. These are not heavy duty and really only accomodate a tall tumbler. But that is its plus. Do make too much quantity to tip doen the sink, small footprint, light and portable and no cumbersome lead to store away. Just use a standard “C” format lead. Have to charge regularly.
Components in second pic.
It’s your turn to empty the dishwasher by the look of it.
Yep. Just as soon as I post this comment on the blog , dear.
Im a big fan of the nutri-bullet and Im quite discerning with kitchen gadgets. I went for the one that makes soup but I never use that function.
Basically it blitzes anything very effectively.
I keep bananas in the freezer (They go brown in about 5 minutes here in Oz, so I peel them, pop them in a plastic bag and into the freezer.)
My smoothies include most things in the fridge that look relatively healthy. Aforementioned frozen banana, with other frozen fruit, protein powder (for my “gains”), maca powder, (no idea what this is – my wife bought a massive packet years ago), LSA, chia seeds, hemp seeds (for the “effect”), and some “mylk” (soy or oat). Bung it in the machine, press the button and Bob’s your uncle. Quick rinse and its ready for the next day.
Macca powder?
It gives you double thumbs aloft.
If there’s fruit in the house or garden, I eat it. Never freeze it, never make smoothies out of it. I don’t see how it can be improved. You guys.
Have you never had a sorbet? Or jam? Or pineapple on a pizza?
Of course I’ve had a sorbet. You’re not the only one who’s lived in Fraaaahnce a bit, you know, only I lived in La Vrai France, not a holiday/retirement destination like you. Sorbets are like ice cream for the meek, and I diskard them uterly. Jam is a food group, and helped our nation through two World Wars, and how dare you. Pizza is a pie base, not a fruit product, as any fule kno.
Nowt to do with smoothie machines, but has anyone tried Moju ginger shots? More ginger per ml than the love child of Chris Evans and Ed Sheeran, they’re magnificent.
Mrs F has tried Ginger shots.
Has she considered Biggles or Algy shots…?
I’m partial to Worrals shots myself.
Update!
First smoothie today, used up the end of a red fruit salad we made on Sunday, added banana, slug of milk and some honey. Delicious! Should have added some oats which I think would have added some nice texture.
You guys.