Product review: Vitamix bar blender

Sooner or later in the kitchen, you'll be blending something.  My wife and I love our soups, but I'm not a huge fan of how broth soups always have you fishing about for the goodies - you always end up coming for seconds to a pot of either empty broth or a pile of garnish.  Not that it keeps me up at night, but it has fostered my love for a perfectly silky puree soup - plus they seem to stick to your ribs more.

This comes to  into play in high volume commercial kitchens - nobody needs to be fishing around for the chunks when serving 100 guests.  I've spent a lot of time working in hotels, and while a soup is always garnished one way or another, the base soup is very often  a puree, a very nice one, and the element of "silkiness" is of paramount importance (assuming you have the flavour part covered).  That said, I've used a lot of bar style blenders and know that if only for soup, every kitchen needs a good one.  You will find that most chefs and cooks who've had the pleasure will back a Vitamix blender.  They'll actually ask for it by name - it's like Xerox and photocopying in the 80's - the brand is synonymous with the task.

Where you can really see a difference between brands is when blending a high-fibre vegetable, say asparagus.  I remember as a production cook the first time I made a large batch of asparagus soup - I looked at my steam kettle, anticipating a great yield that would supply a couple good banquets.  Sadly, our kitchen had a decent, but not great blender, and by the time the soup was blended and passed through a mesh strainer, I had lost literally litres of volume due to the great amount of fibre caught in the straining process.  Not only that, I actually had to re-strain the soup since a lot of  that fibre had been minced fine enough to get through the strainer, but not fine enough to have a nice mouth-feel.   The difference with this task had it been done with a Vitamix is that the rpms of the blender are so much higher (the thing is a beast) that the yield of the soup would be hugely increased as the fibres are much more likely to actually get pureed rather than minced.  Of course, with a vegetable like asparagus, you would still want to strain it, but depending on  the other vegetables you might be using, further straining often seems pointless once you see the final result.  Needless to say, this blender isn't limited to soups - smoothies, sauces, baby food, emulsifications, fluid gels - even margaritas (careful not to liquify the ice) all are dealt with masterfully.

So if you are in the market for a kitchen blender, you may want to look into a Vitamix.  As you might guess, they aren't a bargain basement brand, but you can rest assured that what you pay will have a payoff in quality - indeed, don't be surprised if a cook comes over and exclaims "you have a Vitamix at home? - Lucky!"  CHECK IT OUT HERE.