Cooking with Your High-Power (Blendtec, Vitamix...) Blender

[Chris Amirault]

After decades of feeble power, leaks, and mediocre to lousy results, I finally found a way to get a Blendtec blender into the house. (Mom, Dad, and Bed, Bath, & Beyond 20% coupon: thank you.) It should be here next week.

It's my understanding that I'm receiving a machine that prepares everything from ice cream to soup, shaved ice to fondue, with the push of a button. But surely there's more to it than dumping stuff into the container and pressing "start."

So who's making what with their high-power blender? I want details: ingredients, times, temps... What works and why. What doesn't and why.

Who's on first?

[mkayahara]

Find any excuse you can to make an agar-based fluid gel. After struggling with them for years with my old blender, I made one in my Vitamix: in, buzz, out, strain. It was brilliant.

Also, any Mexican sauce involving pureed dried/rehydrated chillis.

[Chris Amirault]

Give me a few sample recipes that you've used to good effect. You can assume I have, you know, a couple of books here and there.

[Brown Hornet]

Here's a very quick basic one that we use all the time for creamy tomato soup -- takes about 15 minutes start to finish:

Saute in olive oil and butter

1/2 onion + 1 carrot diced

add 1 garlic clove diced

add 1 large can quality canned tomatoes

1 cup ck stock

fresh basil to taste

salt pepper to taste

heat through on simmer about 5 minutes

blend for 2-3 minutes at speed 6 (or use the soup preset)

The result -- very bright and fresh tasting tomato soup with a creamy texture but without using cream that dulls the flavor. Can't really get the same creamy texture with a regular blender.

Of course when tomatoes are in season, you can use peeled seeded fresh tomatoes instead of canned -- but may need to adjust the liquid.

[mkayahara]

As far as fluid gels, I made the sage gel in Alinea on the "Pork, grapefruit, sage, honeycomb" dish... come to that, I made the whole dish.

Recently I made the chorizo in Rick Bayless' Mexico One Plate at a Time, which calls for rehydrated-and-pureed ancho chillis. I've also made the pork and potato tacos with guajillo sauce from the same book. In both cases, the chilli-based sauces were far easier to puree, with far less waste, than when I made the red mole from that book using my old blender!

[gdenby]

I got one a few months ago. Most of what I have made was straight out of the cookbook. Making soups that are pre-cooked just be mechanical energy is freaky.

The number one use so far has been nut butters. My wife and remaining kid at home eat huge amounts of them on sandwiches.

For example, to make crunchy peanut butter.

Reserve a few tablespoons of dry roasted peanuts. Crush those in a pestle.

Pour the rest of the jar into the ordinary Blendtec container. Run at speed 3 until the peanuts are crushed. Stop. Push down. Much will be too fine already for crunch bits.

Run at speed 5 for about the same time, and stop. Different brands of roasted peanuts give different results. Most likely, add a tablespoon of peanut oil. If the peanuts are not sweet, add a tablespoon of honey.

Run 2 full cycles at speed 5, pushing down if necessary between cyles.

Spoon into container, and mix in pestle crushed bits.

Have fun. I don't think of it so much as a blender as a puree machine. Next up for me, meat emulsification.

[weinoo]

I make smoothies. Is that cooking ?

[Chris Hennes]

I made hummus tonight for about the hundredth time since I got mine. I think you will find that there is a "sweet spot" in terms of the speed/viscosity combinations that work the best. For example, with hummus you can start it on high, but once the chickpeas begin to break down you have to lower the speed a bit or nothing will ever hit the blades. But if you lower it too much you can get weird cavitations. With nut butters I find that if you want to make them without adding any additional oil it's actually best to start them in the food processor and process their until they liquify on their own. Then switch over to the blender to get it smooth, running it at top speed until you're happy with it. For things like Mexican dried chile sauces it works best with a fairly large amount of liquid, but if you get it right, there's no need to strain at the end, which is handy.

[jmolinari]

I make a smoothie just about every weekday morning.

12 oz. OJ

4 fl. oz. greek yogurt plain

1/4 banana frozen

180g frozen fruit of choice (i used mixed berries from costco)

2T flax meal

1/4 cup rolled oats.

blend to hell.

Drink.

Making blended soups which are just simmered vegetables in water or chicken stock also is nice.

[eternal]

I JUST made tomato soup and wish I woud have read this first. It crossed my mind to use the blendtec but ended up just using the stick (and then didn't use onions, carrots, etc).

Anyway, I've used the blendtec to make mole a few times. It is great because you can basically skip all the straining steps.

A nice thing to have around for desserts are some frozen bananas and a good way to preserve bananas passing their shelf life. When a banana is about to go bad, peel it, stick it in a plastic bag and throw in the freezer. Then, whenever you are wanting a quick ice cream-like dessert, make this:

2 frozen bananas (peeled)

1 cup frozen strawberries, raspberries, whatever

1 tbs cocoa nibs

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup half and half or heavy cream

Blend till smooth with ice cream consistency - it'll be thick

You might have to adjust the cream ratio a bit

I tend to make hummus in the food prc still. haven't figured out the right ratio yet to not get the blades to cavitate.

[EnriqueB]

I have MyCook which is a clone of Thermomix. I use is mostly as one of the highest-power blenders available around here (it also cooks but I don't find it so useful for that, except for some sauces and to hydrate hidrocoloids).

The kings of the show are Gazpacho and Salmorejo, the cold tomato soups typical from the south of Spain. Tomatoes are now in season (though september & october are the best months) and we consume at least 5 liters of Gazpacho every week at home during the summer. The texture of Gapzacho you get with a high-speed blender cannot be matched by any other blender.

[DanM]

My VitaMix is wonderful for finishing cream of whatever soups. It also does a great job blending and frothing hot chocolate.

[Chris Amirault]

Two sets of questions are arising, both of which may become obvious when I'm actually using the thing.

1. What is cavitation? Why is it a problem? What specific methods do you use to avoid it?

2. Is the difference between gazpacho and hot tomato soup simply time, or are there methods/settings that one adjusts to account for temperature?

[jmolinari]

Two sets of questions are arising, both of which may become obvious when I'm actually using the thing.

1. What is cavitation? Why is it a problem? What specific methods do you use to avoid it?

2. Is the difference between gazpacho and hot tomato soup simply time, or are there methods/settings that one adjusts to account for temperature?

1) basically the formation of an air pocket around the blade...this happens when my stuff is too thick and doesn't flow back into the blade

2) to make stuff hot, you just run teh hell out of it at top speed. I tried this and didn't really see much point. Also, when i make gazpacho i like it a little chunky, somehting which would be impossible to do with this. You'd end up with a bowl of V8

[EnriqueB]

2. Is the difference between gazpacho and hot tomato soup simply time, or are there methods/settings that one adjusts to account for temperature?

In gazpacho all vegetables are raw, just blended together with some vinegar, then extra virgin olive oil is added and emulsified. Optionally, the ingredients can be cut and infused together overnight for flavours to mix before blending. I understand that for the hot tomato soup you first saute the ingredients.

Edited June 19, 2012 by EnriqueB (log)

[Chris Amirault]

1) basically the formation of an air pocket around the blade...this happens when my stuff is too thick and doesn't flow back into the blade

So the two solutions to cavitation are (1) stop the blender, tamp stuff down, and restart, and (2) insure that whatever you're blending is viscous enough to keep sliding down the sides, yes? Do you have to adjust your recipes to account for this? I guess I thought that a $400 blender figured this out for me....

[Brown Hornet]

I don't really see any benefit of 'cooking' soup with a high powered blender although it's a neat trick. I typically just simmer the ingredients together 5-10 minutes and then blend. The real benefit for me is the speed and quality of blending. Previously, to get a perfect soup texture would require several rounds of blending then straining through a chinois. The blendtec has made the chinois redundant as I can get that perfect silky smooth texture with one blending cycle.

I've never tried it for gazpacho as I prefer a 1/2 blended 1/2 chunky style that my old trusty immersion blender is perfect for. A relatively short blend (say 1-2 minutes) shouldn't heat it up too much. Maybe you could add a cube or two of frozen tomato water to help keep it cold although you may end up with a gazpacho slushee. Hmmm, I feel like there's a MC concept in here somewhere.

[jmolinari]

1) basically the formation of an air pocket around the blade...this happens when my stuff is too thick and doesn't flow back into the blade

So the two solutions to cavitation are (1) stop the blender, tamp stuff down, and restart, and (2) insure that whatever you're blending is viscous enough to keep sliding down the sides, yes? Do you have to adjust your recipes to account for this? I guess I thought that a $400 blender figured this out for me....

Correct. When i use it for baby food i have to add water to the roasted vegetables i'm blending.

[Brown Hornet]

1) basically the formation of an air pocket around the blade...this happens when my stuff is too thick and doesn't flow back into the blade

So the two solutions to cavitation are (1) stop the blender, tamp stuff down, and restart, and (2) insure that whatever you're blending is viscous enough to keep sliding down the sides, yes? Do you have to adjust your recipes to account for this? I guess I thought that a $400 blender figured this out for me....

In my experience, the high powered blender has solved the cavitation problems I previously had with my old blender. That's not to say it won't ever happen, but it will happen far less often with a high powered blender. Also, the preset programs have built in starts and stops to help prevent cavitation -- although again it is rarely an issue for me.

[Chris Amirault]

I don't really see any benefit of 'cooking' soup with a high powered blender although it's a neat trick. I typically just simmer the ingredients together 5-10 minutes and then blend.

Can anyone see those benefits?

[slkinsey]

The VitaPrep solves the cavitation problem with a kind of baton-like implement that sticks down into the canister and can be adjusted to break up the cavitation an entourage a powerful vortex (it's not really meant to be used as a shoving implement, although people do use it that way). Generally speaking, the Blendtec is better for smoothies and beverages and the VitaPrep is better for purees, sauces, etc.

Edited June 20, 2012 by slkinsey (log)

[Chris Amirault]

Does anyone use their blender as a spice grinder?

[mgaretz]

Once I used the Blendtec to grind some dill seeds. It scratched the hell out of the container. It was probably still just fine, but it bothered me enough that I got a new one. But now I have one to use for spices! (it ground them fine)

[mkayahara]

I don't use mine for spices, but I've seen it used for them. (Bizarrely, the kitchen in question didn't have a pepper grinder of any description; when they need ground pepper, it goes into the Vita Prep). It does cloud the container, though.

[TheNoodleIncident]

Once I used the Blendtec to grind some dill seeds. It scratched the hell out of the container. It was probably still just fine, but it bothered me enough that I got a new one. But now I have one to use for spices! (it ground them fine)

I seem to remember the directions mentioning that milling any sort seed or grain will likely cloud the canister. Doesn't affect anything besides appearance.

Also, I think the main benefit to "cooking" soup in the blender itself is just convenience and not having another pot to clean. I don't think it will get hot enough to properly "cook" the soup, so depending on what you are using you may need to saute it ahead of time anyway. Instead, the blender makes it hot enough for service (which is perfectly fine in many cases).

I like to use a corn base for soup and go from there. Liquid is either stock or milk/cream. Many differenet directions to go in - fresh herbs (basil, dill, cilantro, etc), garlic/onion/shallots, bacon or ham (not blended), smoke flavor, seafood, other veggies, certain oils and/or butter, some spic heat, whatever. Simple, quick, delicious.