Juicer Vs. Blender - What to Buy for Your Kitchen

When it comes to juicers and blenders, we often describe them as electrical appliances that yield drinks and food substances in soft or liquid forms. Similarly, they both have jars with blades that spin within them. To add to the confusion, many people have the habit of stringing together the two words juicer and blender as if it were the same thing. However, there is a vast difference between the two, especially in their structure and functioning. Here is a simple classification to help you choose the right appliances.

Juicers: How do they Work?

• A user can use the juicer by fixing the juicing container on top of the electric motor along with an empty container at the base.
• The juicing container is then attached with a blade and a semi-covered lid at the top.
• When the juicer is turned on, the user needs to push the fruits or vegetables inside the juicing container at a fixed pace. Unlike a blender, there is no regulator to control the speed of the juicer.
• As the blades crush the fruits, one can see the container at the base filling up with fresh juice.
• There are three basic forms of juicers, namely centrifugal, masticating and triturating. While centrifugal juicers beat the juice out of the fruits with the rotating blades, masticating juicers turn the fruits or vegetables into a pulp and then separate the juice from them. Triturating juicers press the fruits to help release fresh juice from them.

Blenders: How do they Work?

• The process generally starts with the user selecting an ideal blade from the set and attaching it inside the container. The attachment process is extremely simple and involves screwing the blade tightly in place.
• Once done, the user needs to put the food to be processed inside the container.
• This is followed by fastening of the air-tight lid on top of the container.
• Now, the container is fitted into the hollow socket at the top of the electric motor and the wire is connected to the electric supply.
• All one needs to do is start the blender and control the regulator which is a part of the electric motor. As the name might suggest, the regulator helps the user to control the speed with which the motor spins the blade within the container. This speed might be increased or decreased as per our requirement.
• A few state-of-the-art electric blenders offer separate buttons for functions like grating, grinding, blending etc.

Choosing Between Juicers and Blenders

The juicer is known to yield fresh juice in a concentrated form. These juices do not contain inedible parts of fruits like the fibers, peels or seeds if any. These inedible materials are collected in the inbuilt sieve. Once the juice is segregated, the sieve can be easily detached and waste collected in the sieve can be thrown away. The whole procedure of using a juicer is quite simple. It is one of the best ways to prepare a quick breakfast drink every morning. However, nutrition experts point out that a juicer takes away all the fiber from the fruit that is highly essential for our body. Similarly, it takes more quantity of fruits and vegetables to make one glass of concentrated juice than a fruit drink made in a blender, making it all the more expensive. It has also been pointed out that, it takes more time to disassemble the juicer and clean it after every use.

A blender helps to grind solid foods into fine powder, paste or batter forms. If the food contains some moisture, then it is turned into a pulp albeit with solid particles of the processed food. One may note that there is no specific waste accumulation at the end of the blending process. If however, users need to separate the solid particles from the liquids, the same needs to be done manually with the help of a sieve. One can therefore see that a blender has a variety of uses compared to a juicer. A blender as an appliance is much cheaper than a juicer and can be cleaned up with ease in a jiffy. The yield of a blender is higher in volume thereby making the juice or pulp cheaper. One of the most notable advantages is that blenders can be used for making drinks out of fruits such as bananas or mangoes which do not yield a liquefied juice. Similarly, blenders can be used for mixing multiple ingredients to form one smooth combination. However, nutrition experts point out that blended juices and pulps are slightly difficult to absorb during the digestion process.

The difference between the two appliances is now quite wide and clear. In fact, it is impossible to pick and choose only one of these appliances for your kitchen since both of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. So, if you are making a shopping list of useful appliances for your kitchen, I suggest that you buy a juicer as well as a blender.