[Closed] Smoothie maker, Juicer, Blender? Help I'm confused.

Get a blender and you can get some nice soups on the go aswell.

You will need to water down any fruit you blend with something so it is drinkable. Can use anything from coconut milk, fruit juice, ordinary milk, greek yoghurt etc.

Juicers are a right pain in the bum to clean , we gave ours away after about 10 uses. Go for the blender!

OK thanks! It sounds like the blender is the way forward.

And just get a blender, smoothie maker tends to be the same but with a tap at the bottom that makes it more difficult to clean.

OK ta. I'm a big fan of simplicity.

I sort of disagree. A blender and a juicer do different things.

If you put apples into a juicer, to get apple juice as a "base" to your smoothies, you will get, albeit clouldy, apple juice. The bulk of the apple product is seperated from the juice.

If you put apples into a blender, all you will get is a thick, pulpy, mashed apple, which is not the same thing at all.

You need the juicer, to get the thin running juices. A smoothie maker is only a simplified blender.

So for example, this morning, I made a red berry and banana yoghort smoothie. - I put in a banana, some frozen red berry mix from Sainsburys, a few spoonfuls of cheap basics yoghourt, and then thinned it out with apple juice, to make a thickish but drinkable product. That takes about 30 secs in the blender.

If you tried the same thing with a smoothie maker, but omit the apple joice, and go for apples, you'd be blending for a good while longer, and end up with a much thicker, virtually undrinkable product. Mashed apple isnt the same as apple juice.

A soft fruit like a banana blends easilly. A carrot, or an apple or pear, do not, and require seperating the joice fromt he pulp.

However, you will find, when you start to use a jouicer, that unless you have good supplies of VERY low cost fruit, that the economics don't work. You would need to pulp in the juicer, dozens and dozens of apples, to get the same £79p carton from Sainsburys. Ok, home juiced tastes generally much better, but even if you get fruit from a market, it's still an expensive way to obtain juice at home.

After a recomendation from a friend I have now. been having a fruit smoothie for breakfast most mornings. I very simply use a hand blender and a tall bowl that came with it.
Roughly cut some fruit an apple , pear banana etc inyo the bowl maybe chuck in a couple strawbs or grapes a small smount of juice or even water and squash then blend away and drink from the bowl which is pint glass shaped.

Job done snd washed up in seconds .

we've got a blender and a hand blender, and we used to have a juicer (emphasis on used to)

As above, the novelty of juicing half a ton of apples to get a small glass of cloudy apple juice soon wears off. The blender is good, if you're making a larger qty like a pan of soup or several smoothies, but the hand blender is the one that gets used most. Ours is a Braun will a detachable motor bit so the actual blender end gets rinsed and in the dishwasher. Banana, yoghurt and porridge oats, let down with a bit of milk to make it runny enough to drink - yum!

Mrs k uses a juicer, she did have some Philips thing which was noisy, produced little and an arse to clean. She now has one of these

http://www.greenstar.com/star1.asp

which is quieter, produces a lot, lot more juice per veg and reasonably easy to clean. she rates it, although it is expensive and weighs a ton, I think she should just eat the fruit without mashing it up in a machine

Juicer and blender are different but a smoothie maker and a blender are essentially the same tool, just the smoothie maker tends to have a tap at the bottom which makes it more difficult to clean.

I like juice but a juicer is a pain in the arse to clean, used one for about a month them it went to the charity shop.

Thanks guys, some useful info here. I'll still probably go for the blender and like folk have said just add a liquid to the mix to make it all drinkable. It's more about getting more fruit and veg intake than cutting the cost of fruit juice. I can't imagine juicing half a ton of fruit to get a shot glass full of juice much fun, then having to clean all the equipment afterwards too. I'll be making a lot of milkshakes too so a blender should be good for that.

Tesco value blender. Cost me about 7 quid iirc.
Does the job.

Whatever you get it'll end up in a corner gathering dust after a few weeks (days probably). So get a cheap one and that way you won't of wasted too much money.