Stick Blender - contains merged threads

bigsmoke

mine was £6.99 from woolies about 4 years ago - works absolutely fine for soups, can't say i've tried it on much else though.

oh, except for potato mashing when our masher went missing - as mentioned above, we might have been able to use if for glue, but we definitely couldn't eat it, a real waste!

cooking-mama

Thanks guys..il have a good read through the stick blender topic too,thanks Pink-winged

cooking-mama

Ive just read through the full topic Pink-winged posted the link too,very informative...one thing puzzles me tho, it turns out the (coveted)Bamix is only between 160 and 200w depending on the model,there are plenty others loads cheaper than that with a much higher wattage,the £24.99 philips one i was looking at is 650w, i thought wattage was a good indicator of power?

squeaky

Wattage IS the power rating. The higher the wattage the higher the power.

Or more correctly in this instance - the amount of power drawn by the appliance from your electrical supply. It depends on the efficiency of the appliance as to how much of the power is actually applied as work on its intended target.

angeltreats

Agapanthus wrote: »

I've also heard that some varieties of potato can produce an absolutely disastrous (read inedible) result if you try to mash them with an ordinary stick blender. Some types seem to be OK, but try it at your own risk.:eek:

This unfortunately is true. I know because I told my OH to throw the spuds into the Kenwood Chef when cooked and mash them that way (a food mixer with K beater does a great job of mash!) but he used the stick blender instead and turned them into glue. It was BAD.

I have a very cheap Cookworks one, it's about three years old now and still going strong. I've used tons of them (I was a chef until last Saturday when I finally hung up my chef whites for good!) and oddly enough it seems that the cheaper the blender, the longer it lasts. In my last job we went through three expensive Waring blenders in the space of five months, they kept being replaced under warranty but they were useless. And the job before that we had an extremely cheap Tesco own brand one that coped with everything we threw at it.

BinkyTheHorse

angeltreats wrote: »

I have a very cheap Cookworks one, it's about three years old now and still going strong. I've used tons of them (I was a chef until last Saturday when I finally hung up my chef whites for good!) and oddly enough it seems that the cheaper the blender, the longer it lasts. In my last job we went through three expensive Waring blenders in the space of five months, they kept being replaced under warranty but they were useless. And the job before that we had an extremely cheap Tesco own brand one that coped with everything we threw at it.

I second this - I have a cheapo one that I bought when introducing my eldest to solids when he was around 4 months old, son has recently celebrated his 16th birthday (as has the stick blender I suppose ) and blender is still going strong. Not bad going considering it's used most days.

Sunnyday

I`ve got two stick blenders, a very old MR one which belonged to my Mum and i can remember this from when i was little - still going strong might i add, and a cheapy kenwood that was about a fiver. They both get used regularly and i love em!

I too coveted the Bamix for quite a while but i`m glad that i didn`t succumb in the end

SD

Living_proof

I am thinking of requesting one of these from Santa but wonder if any of you have recently bought one you could recommend?

I have had a £4.97 one from Tesco for a few years, but it is not really powerful enough for say eight portions of soup and I reverted to using the full sized blender in the end.

Some of the newer ones seem to incorporate whisks and mashers, but would any of you kind OSers let me have any tips before splurging please? I found a heavy duty one on a website which was £600, but I am def. not in that market!

angeltreats

I'm sure I remember posting this in a similar thread ages ago so apologies if I'm repeating myself, but in my experience the expensive models really are no better than the cheapo ones. At home I have an Argos Cookworks one that I paid about a tenner for quite a few years ago, and it's still going. It regularly makes big batches of soup, pizza sauce etc.

In my last chef job (before I hung up my apron for good!) I was there for about five months and burnt out three expensive Waring blenders designed for the professional market (I used to make at least one batch of soup every day), they were replaced under warranty but really they should have lasted a lot longer! And before that I worked in a kitchen where there was an Asda own brand blender that had cost about a fiver, it was bought in an emergency when the "proper" blender broke but several years of taking a daily thrashing in a restaurant kitchen hadn't killed it. I'd say you might just have been unlucky with the Tesco one.

When my cheapo Argos blender dies, I'll probably replace it with a Kenwood one like this, as the Kenwood products I've had have always been reliable (never managed to kill one yet!).

Have to say I'm not a big fan of the various attachments that some of them come with. I prefer a ricer/food mill for making mash, and one of these for anything requiring a whisk (or my Kenwood Chef for bigger stuff).

shebangs

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