VitaMix, Kalorik, and the 400 dollars in between - 2.

Pt.2

No dice. There are a few people offering whole canisters, with the mechanism attached, but they all end up selling for almost as much as an entire machine. People REALLY want those suckers. And an entire NEW machine costs as much as a case of Petrus. From a good year. (At least that's what it seems like to my current wallet).

After weeks of losing bids, I finally broke down and got myself a non-VitaMix replacement blender.

May my mom forgive me.

Some while back I remember Cook's Illustrated did another in a series of blender comparisons, and Kitchen Aid took top honors (they wrote a sidebar saying they weren't including the VitaMix because it was in a class by itself). Coming in second, performing nearly as well, was the Kalorik BL Blender. For 40 dollars. FORTY dollars! It got the "Best Value" award.

I gritted my teeth, swallowed my pride, and ordered one - on sale for THIRTY TWO dollars at Amazon (I see they're now at 50. Sorry). I figured anything was worth a shot at that price. If it made even one decent margarita I'd be happy.

Well I've had it for about 3 weeks now and here's what I think, if you're interested:

The Good:

That sucker sure can blend. And grind, and pulverize, and rend. There are 6 blades set at different angles, two of which are micro-serrated, and they're all sharp as hell. The canister tapers at the bottom so there is no escape from those blades, either. The heavy glass canister's inner fins do a great job of disrupting rising vortexes and throwing ingredients back down into that spinning death. And the motor is really strong: no struggle at all to make a pile of snow from a full load of ice cubes. No jamming, and no hesitation once you hit "on". It's got two speeds, plus Pulse. I like that a lot better than 18 buttons labeled "frappe", "whiz", "puree", etc. It's also amazingly quiet, considering.

The Bad:

It's got some really cheap looking plastic parts. I guess they had to save money somewhere, and they didn't want to save it where it counts, but jeez. The thin flappy plastic lid looks and feels like it was made by PlaySkool, and fits insanely tight. You almost have to wedge a knife between it and the canister to prize the thing off after a bout of blending. The connector mechanism - the one made of steel on the VitaMix that blew out on me after 3 1/2 decades - looks like it was made of the same plastic as the crummy lid (although to its credit it so far has defied my initial expectation that it would evaporate as soon as the thing was plugged in). The canister, although surprisingly solid and well designed, is on the small side (48 oz.). I'm not used to doing batches.

But most annoying - alarming, really - is that the instruction manual states in large, insistent font: "DO NOT OPERATE BLENDER FOR MORE THAN ONE MINUTE. FOR EVERY MINUTE THAT YOU BLEND, THE MACHINE MUST REST FOR 10 MINUTES."

What? Really? A minute? One?? And then...a TEN MINUTE REST?

I decided I wasn't going to take their word on that, of course. The first thing I did was dump in a can of garbanzo beans and some tahini for hummus. I wanted it really smooth and figure it would take an el-cheapo 30 dollar machine at least a minute, right? I mean, I wanted it really smooth.

I crammed the cheap plastic lid on, turned it to "high", and stood back.

After 20 seconds the contents looked pretty smooth indeed. But I let it keep ripping.

At 45 seconds the hummus was a uniform looking paste, but the base started emitting a rather scary burning electric smell.

I turned it off, spooned out the perfect hummus, and turned the range hood fan on. A half hour later the stench cleared.

The manual was right!

To be fair: 1. It hasn't taken anywhere near a minute for that machine to blast apart ANYTHING I've put in it, so it's never become and issue, and 2. The smell stopped after a couple of days. I'm guessing it was new electric motor smell more than anything, burning off surface oils left from the manufacturing process. So I feel safer about using it.

Upshot? It's a great machine for the price, if you don't mind some limitations. Some SEVERE limitations if you have to blend, say, a soup in batches and you can't wait ten minutes for the base to cool between those batches. But for sheer destructive power, it'll probably deconstruct anything short of a Schwinn.

In other words, it's no VitaMix. But it'll do 'til I can find one that costs less than a case of Petrus (from an off year).

[Jenise]

Do not operate for more than one minute? Wait ten minutes?

Are they KIDDING? Did the whiz kids at Cooks' mention this not-so-little exception? If not, shame on them, as you say when pureeing foods in batches, that would be unacceptable.

Hilarious story, and poignant too. I have a few things that belonged to my mom, and I've shed tears when they bit the dust.

I've been in blender hell too, btw. Want company? About a year ago I made vichysoisse for 70 and put my new-at-the-time Kitchen Aid blender to a real test--I'd have been hosed with your Kalorik. And in spite of the fact that all it was grinding was well-cooked vegetables, 25 quarts of it was a bit of a strain and toward the end of the night, I heard a ker-chunk. After the ker-chunk, it didn't seem to process the mixture as thoroughly or as quickly.

And has disappointed since, so I recently decided that I must have bent the blade somehow and should replace that part. So off I went to Kitchenaid.com. I saw my blender. And I saw a lot of other things too. But replacement parts? Nada. A 'Contact us' feature that would allow me to email an inquiry? Nada. A phone number? Nada. On departing the site I got hit with a survey about my experience which smugly seemed more about causing me to positively affirm to myself the superiority of Kitchen Aid equipment than actually find out if their website met the need I came there with. Since it didn't, with each question I became more enraged.

And in that state I then went to the Cuisinart site and was so impressed to see Replacement Parts listed right below each appliance that I decided to reward them by ordering a blender/processor combo.

When it arrived I unpacked the unit piece by piece. Nice, heavy glass jar. Curiously light motor unit. Smaller processor unit than expected. And then I went to put it on the appliance bar and remove the Kitchen Aid to the charity pile immediately. Because of a height restriction there I had to lift the jar off first, which I noted was so light. Plastic. Actually a benefit, I thought when I bought it, because a pitcher full of margaritas or soup is a heavy thing. Then I went to one-hand the motor unit. Ouch. Couldn't lift. Too heavy. Hmmm...all metal parts vs. all plastic. Is this okay? Probably not, I realized with dismay, sparing it from the charity pile temporarily.

Two days later I decided to try out the new Cuise with a roquefort/cottage cheese spread, a fairly light 1:4 blend that any food processor should be able to handle with ease. Well, it did not handle it well at all: it did a very poor job of blending the mixture and had to run much much longer than I would have expected. And equally bad, it makes a fierce amount of noise at a fairly high pitched decibel--it actually hurts your ears. I have never heard a kitchen appliance even half so loud. I expected a deep purring Harley Davidson kind of noise, and instead I got a two-stroke weed whacker. It's a piece of crap in every way possible.

And worse: I'm stuck with it. Or, the Salvation Army is. My husband threw out the box immediately so returning it is not an option. I'll never EVER buy a piece of Cuisinart merchandise again--the quality that once existed in that brand is gone forever.

So now what?

I'm not sure which I'm more thrilled by: a soul mate in my epic blender quest/saga, or the fact that you know the difference between a 2- and 4-stroke engine. Kudos to you for both!

And what a gripping, emotionally cathartic story! Drama! Heartbreak! Pathos out the wazoo! Alas that there was no happy ending...yet. But with God as my waitress, I swear that we will both prevail someday. When I hit the lottery, I'll hook you up with a VitaMix CIA Professional model

And no, the Cook's team thoughtfully neglected that minor drawback. I suppose for 32 dollars that Kalorik really is the best you could hope for. But yeah, like you, I think it's an incredibly bad feature. You can only do 5 one-minute batches an hour! (1 minute on, 10 minutes off = 11 minutes per batch, I finally figured out.)

Hey Janise, that really was a great story to read. I love reading other peoples' foodie stories, and that was a terrific one. Thanks for posting it!

Wow, I'm getting happier and happier with my ancient Osterizer.

And, as a parting gift -- my offices are relocating next week -- I'm going to nip down to Century 21 (a famous discount department store in NYC) and buy myself an immersion blender.

Woo hoo! Century 21 ROCKS!

While you're down that way, you should take a walk over to Chinatown and check some of the restaurant supply stores dotting the area around Canal and Bowery. I've seen some good pro units pretty cheap in the past.

And pick me up one of them 3 dollar steamer baskets while you're there, willya?

Have fun with the office move