I have received a Vita-Mix. I always dearly wanted one, but now that I have it, I have concluded that it is basically a very heavy, expensive blender. I don’t grind my own grain, and seldom make soup in small quantities. Smoothies always come out with at least one giant frozen strawberry chunk left unblended, just like every other blender. What am I missing here? What will this do that a regular blender, food processor or breadmaker won’t? Internet searches and past SMDB threads haven’t told me anything new. Cream sauces sound like a possibility, but that alone isn’t enough to justify the counter space. Convince me to love my Vita-Mix.
You could have acheived the same result by buying a cheap blender, throwing your wallet into it, and turning it on.
How long would you recommend blending it? And would there still be lumps in it afterward?
Fortunately, it was free. Less a few bucks for a fitting from the hardware store to replace the annoying spigot. It’s ready for a new gasket, though, and I won’t spend the dough if I can’t justify it.
It’s just a blender with a really powerful motor and good design.
I used to love those old commercials – with the woman tossing in whole apples, carrots, bananas, onions, shoes, etc, and getting tasty and healthy juice out of the spigot on the bottom.
Are you saying it doesn’t really work like that? Another childhood illusion shattered!
I love mine.
When you make smoothies, are you making sure that it’s flowing correctly and not binding up with an air bubble? Sometimes that happens, and you need to adjust the speed so it doesn’t. I’ve never had it not worth perfectly, though I can say I don’t do smoothies enough.
I love it for pureeing vegetables, especially dried chiles. It can handle the skins so I don’t have to strain them out - I’ve never seen a non-Vitamix able to handle that.
Pureed veggy soups are also much more pureed in the Vitamix.
My ex had one. I liked to use it to make popcorn salt. Regular salt in the vitamix, turn it on, and a few minutes later it was a fine powder. I don’t think a regular blender could do that.
But a spice grinder can easily.
I’m going to do the juice thing with whole fruits and vegetables tomorrow. Leaving out the shoe. Not sure about the onion.
I use the food processor to do that with sugar to make superfine sugar. I’ve had the same container of popcorn salt for about 5 years now, so I probably won’t be trying that. I’ll do the sugar in it next time and see how it compares.