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When choosing a blender, most people focus on speed. The logic goes: The faster blades spin, the better they pulverize fruits and vegetables, and the better the resulting smoothie, soup, pesto, or cocktail. Not so, say the engineers at Electrolux. Too much force crushes seeds, which busts them open and releases enzymes that make for a bitter taste. So, instead of designing a faster motor, the company tilted the canister. The angle creates an irregular funnel within the mixture, allowing the food to circulate evenly. And, they’ve employed titanium-coated blades of different shapes and purposes to thoroughly process it. The result is better texture and taste, with half the speed.
Taste Tested: Speed Versus Design
Is the Electrolux’s Masterpiece Collection blender better than a high-speed Vitamix blender? We ran a side-by-side taste test with a kale-and-fruit smoothie (the juice drinkers’ poison of choice). Here’s what we found:
Electrolux Masterpiece Collection Jug Blender
After a 45-second blend, the drink was perfectly smooth, and free of chunks that might clog a straw. Better yet, every sip tasted the same—the product of thorough mixing.
Vitamix 7500
With a max RPM of 37,000, the blender successfully mashed all the juice’s 11 ingredients. But it left a few macerated pieces of fruit behind, resulting in uneven texture and flavor. Confession: We re-processed this blend in the Electrolux post-test to enhance the drinkability.
Electrolux Specs
Speeds: 3
Max Capacity: 74 ounces
Max RPM: 10,000
Price: $349
Features
Angled Canister
Engineers tilted the canister about 5 degrees from its vertical axis, which mimics the way a chef holds a mixing bowl to whip eggs or batter. The angle creates more turbulence in the funnel, circulating food around as well as up and down. This ensures that all ingredients receive equal attention from the blades below.
Off-Center Motor
The 1,200-watt motor is pitched about 5 degrees off-center from the canister, which further agitates the flow of ingredients within the funnel.
Lifting Blades
S-shaped blades sweep the canister’s sides and bottom, lifting pieces of food up and toward the other blades.
Fine-Cut Blades
The shorter, thinner, upwardly angled blades slice open tough skins, like those on apricots.
Crushing Blades
A pair of straight, blunt blades smashes hearty flesh, like that of carrots and potatoes. Since all the blades spin at about 10,000 RPM—roughly half the speed of popular high-speed blenders—they don’t crack seeds.
This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of Popular Science, under the title “Angling for a Perfect Blend”
