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Vitamix 5200

Vita-Mix 5200 Review

by The Chubby Cook on 01. Sep, 2010 in Kitchen Gear

Let me start off my saying that this is a completely independent review. I have used this blender at least three days a week for almost two years. The time has come to let people know what I think about it.  I have included links in this review from where my Vita-Mix was purchased.  The Vita-Mix is not simply a blender, it is a blender on some serious steroids. I never knew that there was really a difference between one blender and another. I just thought that they all blended stuff and called it a day. Well, now I know that there is huge performance gap between the blenders that you buy at Bed Bath & Beyond and the Vita-Mix 5200.

Before I received my Vita-Mix, I was using a Waring Pro Classic blender. It’s a chromed up blender with what I thought was a large glass carafe. It has two speeds, high and low. It was used to make smoothies and to puree soups and whatnot. Typical blending routine, right? I thought so too. There were several issues I had with this blender. First, the base was starting to rust or flake from about three years of use. That’s a bummer to begin with. Nobody wants to use a crappy looking blender. The next issue was the smell that would come from the motor. It was an ozone smell, kind of like what I smell when I am using my cordless drill. It’s not an off-putting smell, but it isn’t anything I want wafting into my nose right before I down a Peaches N’ Yogurt Smoothie (I take my peaches and yogurt very seriously).  I think that this blender was ridden hard and put away wet a few too many times.  Maybe that is why it was rusting and flaking- who knows.

Enter the Vita-Mix 5200. This was a gift from my father and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. These blenders are really expensive, even for the bare basic package. I wanted a new blender, but wasn’t going to plunk down $450 for a blender. My price point was more in the $130 to $185 range. After a while I realized that there were not many decent blenders in this range. Most of them felt cheap or didn’t have good reviews online. The last thing anybody needs is to buy a blender for almost two hundred bucks and find out that it is no better than the one you got rid of. Like I said before, nobody wants a crappy blender.  Well, at least crappy looking blender… but crappy blender is probably worse.  So, I started to research commercial style blenders to see what I could find.

Yes, that is some crap on the dial. This baby gets use! Photo by Scott Groth

There isn’t a huge offering for commercial style blenders. There is the Vita-Mix, the Blendtec A1, the Waring Pro 1200XT and the Maxximum product line. The Blendtec A1 is almost $900, which put it significantly outside my price range. It has sound dampening on it and 30 programmed cycles. There are less expensive models from Blendtec, but they didn’t have the rave reviews like the Vita-Mix. I don’t need 30 programmed cycles. We’re just blending stuff, right?  30 cycles?  Sounds like craziness to me.

The Waring Pro 1200XT is almost the exact same blender as offered by Vita-Mix. The price point is set just higher at $550 and I just couldn’t figure out why. Perhaps someone out there who is reading this has been using one of the 1200XT’s and can tell me how this unit is any different than the Vita-Mix 5200. They have the same paddle type controls and variable speed dials and the same capacity carafe. For the extra hundred bucks, I couldn’t justify the cost. This does look to be an excellent blender though.  Buy the Vita-Mix and then use the extra hundred to buy yourself something nice.

The Maxximum product line just seemed to me like an off-brand. I had a hard time finding reviews that I thought I could trust. The model I was researching was the Maxximum 600 series. It has a paddle type on-off control and two dials. The first dial is the speed dial and the second is a timer. I kind of like the idea of a timer, but I am not running a bar or a professional kitchen. Typically I am standing at the blender watching whatever I am blending whirl around. What can I say, it’s fun to watch.  No need for a timer on my blender, at least not at this point in my life. This model lost in the race to the top for me.

The Vita-Mix 5200 has all the bells and whistles that a person looking for a home blender could ask for. It’s got an on and off switch and a high and low switch. It also has a dial for variable speed blending in the low position. I can’t tell you how handy this dial has come in. It’s really nice to start off on a super-low speed to coarsely chop vegetables or ice. Then you can simply twist the dial to increase the speed and make the consistency of whatever you are blending more fine. I typically start everything off on super low and slowly make my way higher.  I suppose it adds a sense of anticipation to blending.  That’s a mighty fine blender that can add anticipation.

If I am looking to make a fine puree, then I start at super low and work my way through high. Then I switch the paddle from low to high and the machine sounds like it is going to take off from my counter. It’s really incredible to hear and see. The carafe torques to the right as if it is going to fly across the room.  The contents swirl at 240MPH- that’s as fast as the McLaren F1 and faster than the Ferrari Enzo and it’s happening right on my counter top.  Sweet.

The power in the Vita-Mix 5200 is nothing short of spectacular. When some recipes say that you should run the puree through a fine mesh sieve after blending, I know they aren’t using a Vita-Mix. I have run my puree through a fine mesh sieve after hitting it on the high level for three or four minutes and never have anything left in the sieve.  I have made a soup with cold ingredients and left it in the blender on high speed for about 10 minutes and it is warm from the friction built up inside.  It’s really just that powerful.  After this review I am going to setup chairs in my kitchen and make popcorn for people to come over and watch as I blend something.

The basic model that I received is plenty for just about any home cook. It comes with the blender, a big 64 ounce carafe, a blending stick and a cookbook with a bunch of recipes included. I tried about ten of the recipes in the cookbook and they were all good. I have to say that I did make homemade butter, which was really cool. I never thought about making butter in a blender before, or that they could even do such a thing. Maybe I will make it again and put it up in a future blog post.

So what are the drawbacks of this big, powerful blender? Well, I think that for most smoothies the 64 ounce carafe is just too big. I would like to pick up the 32 ounce carafe, but it is $130 bucks. That’s as much as I once wanted to spend on an entire blender, not just a plastic container. It’s a little disappointing that a plastic container is over a hundred dollars. Additionally, if I wanted to make a small batch of pesto, I wouldn’t use this kitchen tool because the blades sit too high in the base of the container. I think you need at least a cup of liquid in this blender to make it work right. Maybe the 32 ounce carafe would solve this problem, I’m not sure.

It is also just a LOT of blender. It’s big and a little bulky. The base of the blender is about twice the size of my Waring Pro Classic.  The blender is really heavy as well at almost 11lbs.  The biggest issue for me is that the blender doesn’t fit under the cabinets when it is fully assembled.  It is over 20″ high, so it takes up even more counter or cabinet space because of the height alone.  But, this is a commercial blender so I guess they weren’t thinking of the home cook when they designed it.  I get it.  I don’t like it, but I get it.

Here’s the scoop: if you blend a lot (I mean you are dedicated to blending) then this is a great blender to have in your kitchen.  From what I can tell, it is indestructible.  It has ample power to blend just about anything and comes with some cool recipes to blend stuff you would never have thought about before.  But, remember that it is an investment of more than just money.  You’re investing counter or cabinet space for this behemoth.  I keep it on the counter so that I remember to use it, always.  Most small kitchen appliances that get put in the cabinet only make it out for special occasions.  This bad mamba jamba gets used constantly.  Most recently it made some homemade ketchup and homemade chili sauce.  Don’t stop there though, make pureed grilled vegetable soup, mango salsa and no-hangover margaritas.  Try some smoothies or a milkshake- kick it back a couple decades and make a malted milkshake.  Whatever you do, if you have this machine, just blend.  The Vita-Mix 5200 get’s the Chub’s emphatic stamp of approval.

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Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Classic

by The Chubby Cook on 26. Jan, 2010 in Kitchen Gear, Uncategorized

I have been seeing a lot of traffic in relation to the Power Juicer Classic. If you have any questions about this unit, I may be able to help out. Shoot me an e-mail at TheChubbyCook@gmail.com. I’ll get back to you just a soon as possible.

For the review, please check it out. Click on the Kitchen Gear link above for easy navigation.  The review was written on January 19, 2010 if that helps.

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Back to Basics Smoothie Maker Update

by The Chubby Cook on 25. Jan, 2010 in Kitchen Gear

My wife read my last post this morning about our smoothie maker and told me that I should give the back story about how it came to be ours.  I try to be a good husband, so I will tell the story.  Caroline put this appliance was on our registry about five years ago when we were getting married.  I fought the choice then, stating that it really wasn’t worth the money and we should just put in a for a good blender.  I saw then as I see now that there is really no point in the pour spout and it just seems like a sales gimmick.  In our discussions, she started to paint me a picture of a far away land where the fruit jumps into the smoothie maker with some yummy yogurt and juice.  In Far Away Land, we would use the smoothie maker every day for quick and delicious breakfasts and would never have to purchase a smoothie again. 

Needless to say, she won the decision and the smoothie maker remained on the registry.  Low and behold, the smoothie maker showed up at our house one day, much to my chagrin.  Like I said, when I opened it it felt cheap and I reiterated to my wife that this thing is a piece of crap and we should take it back for something we would actually use.   If I was a piece of fruit in Far Away Land, I would never jump into this crappy blender wannabe.  She still insisted that it was the best appliance known to mankind and she would use it religiously to make wonderfully delicious smoothies.

To date, she hasn’t used it.

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smoothie maker

Back to Basics Smoothie Maker Review

by The Chubby Cook on 24. Jan, 2010 in Kitchen Gear

This machine looks like a great idea on paper, but then again so did putting hydrogen in zeppelins.  We all know how that turned out.  I won’t draw any more metaphors to explosions, but this unit is a total bomb.  This will be a quick review compared to my other more than long-winded diatribes.

Back to Basics should rename themselves “Crappy Basics” simply because this smoothie maker stinks at making smoothies and as a blender.  The unit is made all of plastic and just feels pretty cheap when you open up the box.  The smoothie maker jar comes with a spout and a plug.  For the ten smoothies I tried to make in this unit, none would come through the spout.  It was always easier to just pour the smoothie out of the top of the jar like a standard blender.  So, I took the spout off and put the plug in, which just created a cleaning issue.  I mean, if you just think about it for a second, why do you need a spout?  I guess it is part of the American Dream to have a blender with a spout. 

When you turn the smoothie maker on, you should wear earplugs.   And that is without anything in it.  The motor is just ridiculously loud.  When you put ice into the plastic jar the sound is amplified about a hundred times.  The plunger that it comes with is a good idea in theory, but the poorly designed jar allows for food to stay below the blades.  If it doesn’t mix up everything in the jar, what is the point?  Although our unit is still running, many of the reviews which I read AFTER the purchase of this product say that it burns out easily. 

Back to Basics, get back to the drawing board.

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Breville Dual-Disc Juice Extractor Review

by The Chubby Cook on 22. Jan, 2010 in Kitchen Gear

Okay.  This is my final juicer review for a while.  The next post about a kitchen appliance will be directed towards blenders and man, do I have a lot to say about blenders.  Not surprising, you’re probably thinking to yourself.  Yeah, I talk alot but it is just my nature. Back to the issue at hand.  After working through the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Classic and the Champion Juicer (both reviews you will find in earlier blog posts) I set out on a search for a juicer which would combine good qualities from both juicers and eliminate most of the bad. 

I researched through at least a dozen different juicers from the very inexpensive to the extremely expensive.  It is perplexing to me that at one point my “make or break” feature was that the machine needed to be able to juice wheat grass.  Wheat grass?  Yes, wheat grass.  Here’s a newsflash people, I have had 1 shot of wheat grass in my entire life and didn’t really enjoy it that much.   Perhaps it was a touch of my OCD shining through, but for a couple days all other juicers were eliminated from the field.

Once my good sense returned, I began to really knock the competition out of the field.  After twelve days of painful deliberation my wife finally chose for me.  She said simply “I’m going to Williams-Sonoma today to get that juicer.  Do you want to come?”  Do I want to come?  Woman, I am master of my domain.  I am man.  I am a man who  has spent twelve days waffling between four juicers.  OK, I said.  When are you going and I’ll meet you there.  **Sigh.**  Although I didn’t check, apparently my balls were still carefully packed up in her purse.

Needless to say, when we arrived at Williams-Sonoma I was like a moth drawn to a flame.  The fabled Breville Dual-Disc Juice Extractor.  Even the name is cool.  Nothing wimpy like the Champion Juicer.  This is a juice extractor.  Yes.  I had visions of airbrushing flames and skulls on this bad mo-fo.  That’s normal for someone to think about with a juicer- right?

So here’s the deal.  This unit is pretty heavy-duty.  Unlike the Power Juicer Classic, the bulk of the parts are made of metal.  Metal just cleans up easier.  This unit also has a dial that allows the user to change the speed of the blade to accommodate different types of produce.  Slower for the more fleshy produce like oranges, medium speed for things like pears and the high speed for hard foods such as carrots.  For a guy who really likes shiny flashy, this is a big draw.  Some of the key components which makes it stand apart from the Champion Juicer begin with being a self contained unit.  The pulp collector feels like it is part of the entire unit.  The produce chute is also very large compared to the teeny-tiny chute found on the Champion Juicer.  Saves an incredible amount of time on prep.  And this unit just absolutely crushes through the produce every morning.

Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of this machine.  It is heavy and appears to be made with quality craftsmanship.  Attention has been spent on the little details, like where the pulp collector connects to the main body of the unit.  It is a perfect fit.  The maceration basket is easy to get in and out of the machine with no tools necessary.  It has enough power to grind a cinder block, I am sure.  I love the fact that the produce chute is giant.  Although I can’t fit an entire apple down the chute like they show in the advertisement, I can fit a half an apple or an entire peeled orange which is nice. It isn’t the first time an advertisement has lied to me, so I don’t feel despondent or put off by the false advertisement.

Here are the pros and cons of this unit, straight from the hip:

Pros:
1. The unit is heavy duty and I think will last a very long time making quality juice.
2. There is enough power to juice just about anything you can think of.
3. The Breville Juice Extractor is well put together with many of the details thought through carefully.
4. Juicing quickly is the name of the game. Nothing stands a chance.
5. Easy clean up. The juicer comes with a brush to clean out the maceration basket and it works great. The other pieces clean up really quickly with warm water. The juice collector can go in the dishwasher for a quick cleanup as well.
6. Huge produce chute makes prep time super fast.
7. Dual-disc setup allows for pulping of softer items like raspberries, prunes, blueberries etc without the bulk of the product going to waste. This is important if you plan on juicing a lot to allow for greater variety. I juiced a banana the other day! No joking. A banana.
8. Multi-speed setup. Although this feature is somewhat of a waste, it is cool to use and in my mind it extracts more juice from the produce. Who knows really- but I tend to follow the directions and my juice is pretty good.
9. The quality of the juice is very good. It has the right mouth-feel and consistency. It is exactly like what you would get from a commercial grade machine at a juice bar. Tasty delicious.
10. I like the foam skimming lip on the juice collector. It allows for the pure juice to get into my glass. At first I thought it was stupid, but the more I use it, the more I like it. Particularly if you get brown foam which is just unappealing.

Cons:

1. The juice chute doesn’t move. When you are done juicing, you have to put a cloth down or it will drip all over your countertop. I have a tile countertop, so it is an issue when I am juicing beets or carrots as the juice will stain the grout if left on long enough.
2. Sometimes I feel that the machine is just too powerful. At the end of a carrot or an apple it shoots the last piece so forcefully through the machine that it makes an incredibly loud smacking sound. BANG! Not sure if that is a smacking sound, but it gets the point across.
3. The maceration basket spins so fast that sometimes when you remove the produce plunger or pusher (whatever you want to call it) some bits of whatever you just juiced come flying up the chute. In my kitchen, these bits deposit themselves on the white cabinets. We don’t need no stinking bits on our cabinets.
4. The Breville Juice Fountainhas most of the same features as the Breville Dual-Disc Juice Extractor and is much less expensive. Although it has no dial to change speeds, it has a high and a low. That’s probably good enough for just about anyone who likes to juice. The same goes for the dual-disc option. Although I rate this as a pro above, it also works as a con here. I like the option of using it, but have only done so three times in about four months. Are these two features worth the extra expense? You be the judge. If I had it to do over, I could probably live without these.
5. This unit is loud. It’s a cool loud, kind of like the Blue Angels flying over your house, but once the cool factor wears off it is just plain loud.

Overall, I really do like the Breville Dual-Disc Juice Extractor. The $400 price tag is very high, but I have juiced enough in it so far that it covers my expense if I had gone to a juice bar every day. The Breville Juice Extractor is just a really cool, well designed unit. It has good looks and should last me a lifetime if I keep juicing for that long. Let’s just say that I am happy that I am no longer using the Power Juicer Classic and really happy that I didn’t purchase the Champion Juicer. When juicing for two, the big chute and power just rock through the produce. I save huge amounts of time and get a really quality juice out of it.

Juice, juice baby.

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Champion Juicer Review

by The Chubby Cook on 20. Jan, 2010 in Juice it, Kitchen Gear

Let’s start off by saying that the Champion Juicer is heavy enough to put in the back of your pickup truck in winter to avoid sliding off the road.  No need for sandbags, just get this juicer.  This thing is seriuously built to last.  In fact, my friend Jamie, who let me borrow his, bought it like 20 years ago or something and it is still going strong.  Beat that Duracell.  While you’re at it, beat that annoying bunny too.  

As I said, Jamie let me borrow his juicer when I realized that the Jack LaLanne Classic Juicer just wasn’t meeting my juicing needs any longer.  I had researched all the available juicers that are currently on the market and the Champion Juicer certainly piqued my interest.   The tough thing about preparing to buy a juicer is simply that the field is chock full of potential players, some of which are expensive, some are prone to injury and some you just don’t know if you are going to like or not.  It is a real crap shoot. 

The Champion came into my care more by accident than anything else.  Well, that and the help of a very generous friend.  I found out that Jamie had the Champion juicer when we were both at the Organic Energy Cafe in Solon, OH.   Apparently the karmic wheel was spinning.  Jamie noticed that they use the same Champion juicer there that he has and proceeded to give me the history on his juicer. For the life of me, I just can’t remember what it was.   I think that he climbed K2 where he encountered a  monk who had no further need of the juicer so he bestowed its ownership to Jamie.  The clouds parted and all was right in the world.  Juicing Unity.

No such thing happened when I borrowed the juicer.  Here’s the rundown on the pros and cons of this gargantuan machine:

Pros:
1. The machine is huge, so it doesn’t move around a lot on the counter.
2. There is enough power going through this machine that it could crush a car, if the car was small enough.
3. The Champion is built to last… all the parts seem to be engineered very well and are quality construction.
4. It is really easy to put together with a very simple design.
5. Due to the simple design, it is relatively easy to clean, which is really nice to find in a juicer.

Cons:
1. The machine is huge, so finding cabinet space for this thing is difficult.
2. It’s pretty loud to run.
3. The Champion Juicer is really pretty messy. The design is such that the pulp gets extracted out of the tube at the end of the juicing apparatus. Sometimes the pulp gets backed up and when it releases, goes flying across the kitchen. It certainly missed the bowl that I put down to catch the pulp and made for a more difficult juicing experience. Did you catch that I said that I needed to put a bowl down to catch the pulp? Read onto 4.
4. It doesn’t come with a pulp collector, meaning that this unit is not self contained. I like to have everything incorporated into the design if possible and this design just doesn’t allow for that to happen.
5. The design doesn’t allow you to juice into a glass or a pitcher. The juice chute points straight down and is pretty wide. It requires a bowl or tupperware be placed there to catch the juice. All in all, it’s just pretty awkward to use.
6. Juicing kale in this machine took forever. The maceration “cone” really did a poor job and the pulp screen became clogged very easily. Additionally, the kale pulp tended to want to come up the produce chute rather than out the pulp chute. I was using the wooden plunger like crazy to keep the pulp going the right direction, but it was naughty kale pulp and just wouldn’t listen.
7. The juice had a very strange mouth-feel. It felt as if it was heavy or had too much residual “plant” in it, if you know what I mean. Sorta thick, like drinking murky pond water. I didn’t have much more success when juicing other fruits etc.

So, here’s the lowdown on the Champion Juicer: it’s heavy duty and would give someone a lifetime of juicing enjoyment. I think that the juice quality is low and the machine has quite a few issues which would prevent me from laying out the bankroll required for purchase. Maybe I am lazy, but I like a machine which fits nicely together. It feels as though the R&D that went into this product went for function, function and more function without even the slightest regard for form.

Check back for a posting on the Breville Dual Disc Juice Extractor review.

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Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Classic Review

by The Chubby Cook on 19. Jan, 2010 in Juice it, Kitchen Gear

About six months ago, I picked up a book called The Raw Food Detox Diet thinking that I would follow a detox plan with raw food. Over the last two summers, I have eaten about a 70%-30% raw to cooked food diet, so I thought that this plan would be right up my alley. As it turns out, I found that I was less interested in the plan and more interested in the fervent nature which Natalia Rose discusses the importance of juicing.

I had read in many other raw books about juicing and understand the differing opinions on whether to juice or not to juice. Some people are gung-ho about juicing while others are saying that there is a reason that fiber is attached to those juices- so we don’t intake too much of the nutrients and essentially overload ourselves. Natalia is so convinced that the Green Lemonade Juice is so good for you that she convinced me to give it a try. I was excited to do so, but found that I was without a juicer. My Vitamix just made a green sludge smoothie which was very unappealing.

About three days later, after calling some people who I thought might have a juicer I could borrow, my father offered up his Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Classic.  Great- this is going to be a match made in heaven, I thought to myself.  I mean, who hasn’t seen the commercials on TV at some point late night. Jack LaLanne is a household name. Now his juicer is in my house, so I put it to the test for about four months.

The good news is that the Green Lemonade juice tastes pretty good.  Rock on Natalia. The not so good news is that the Power Juicer Classic proved pretty difficult to use, and I am a guy who can figure out just about anything pretty quickly.  There are some good things about the juicer and some not so good things, so at this point you can decide. This is what I found about the juicer:

Pros:

1. The juicer is pretty heavy feeling, which was nice, indicating a quality product.
2. The base is large, providing a stable platform when you are juicing harder produce like carrots or beets.
3. You can save time in prep because the chute is pretty wide, allowing for most produce to be added with only 1 or 2 slices needed.
4. It really does put out a lot of juice- just like the site and manual claim.
5. The juice which is produced is clean, without a lot of pulp-feel to it. It’s hard to explain, but the juice feels like juice in your mouth rather than like sieved juice.
6. For the price, it does what it is supposed to do. I give this juicer one thumb up for the value. Keep in mind that more often than not, you get what you pay for.

Cons:

1. All parts with the exception of the juicing basket are white plastic. White plastic tends to stain easily when you are juicing carrots or beets. It also seems to buildup some type of residue on the plastic which is increasingly hard to clean. I followed the instructions to clean with a lemon juice solution and then scrubbed with dish soap after that didn’t work. Long story short, my elbow is sore and the juicer is still orange.

2. When I put some of the pieces in the dishwasher, they fell apart. The seal between the main juicing body and trim ring came unglued. I resealed these and it worked fine, but it was a pain. Also, when I put the produce pusher in the dishwasher, it filled up with water. No matter which way I shook it or propped it up, it would not drain out. If you have own the Power Juicer Classic, apparently you should never top shelf dish wash.

3. Pulp collector. Should be called the partial pulp collector that is hard to fit onto the machine. That name is just too long though. As you can tell, I found that there was not a good seal at all between the Power Juicer Classic and the pulp collector. Bits of pulp were flying out of the machine all over the counter. With more juicy pulping (oranges, ripe mango, grapes) the pulp collector would drip juice onto the counter. Not a huge issue, but it just didn’t fit right. This was prior to putting anything in the dishwasher- just as an FYI.

4. The automatic shutoff bar was a complete pain to manage. If it was chewing on a head of kale and then tried to juice some apples, the machine would start to vibrate across the counter and it would shut off. I wasn’t forcing the vegetables and fruit into the machine either- it was just a normal feed. It seems as though the kale would jam the maceration disk or something. This was a daily occurrence which would force me to stop juicing, take the machine apart, clean the disk and reassemble. It gets old after the third day.

5. After using the machine for about three months, it really started to feel underpowered. I juice for two people every day and the speed of processing the produce is just too slow, particularly if you are juicing fibrous foods. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to juice already when you take into account washing produce, chopping, juicing and washing the machine. Adding more time due to a slow machine just isn’t in the cards.

6. The Power Juicer Classic doesn’t juice all items very well. If you need to juice up some parsley or want to add some mint into one of your drinks, you need to wrap it in something else like a lettuce leaf. Juicing raspberries makes mush in the juice collector and forget something like prunes. The machine has a hard time with ginger as well- the fibers tend to clog the disk.

7. Cleaning the machine is somewhat of a pain. For some reason, the top housing piece comes in two pieces which slide together. The area they slide together can really pinch your fingers if you are not careful when you are cleaning and you really have to slide them apart to make sure that food isn’t stuck in that area. I know that juicers are messy in general, but the Power Juicer Classic just makes it downright tough to clean.

8. The need for a tool to disassemble the machine is a real stinker. Whenever the juicer would clog, using the key to remove the basket just added to the frustration. Not to mention that if you lose the key, you can’t clean the juicer! I would assume that if the key is lost you have to get another one from the manufacturer. Just doesn’t seem very user friendly to me, especially from Jack LaLanne, the household name.

All told, I have mixed emotions with regard to the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Classic. My reason for using it was to see if I was even interested in juicing in the long run, so it definitely served its purpose. There are some pros to this juicer, but it just seems as though the cons quickly outweigh the pros. If you are new to juicing or don’t know if you will be juicing for a long time to justify the cost of a more heavy-duty juicer, I would say that this unit is just right. If you are thinking more long term, I would turn your head toward a Breville or something along those lines.

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