Juicer advice needed!

Hi all,

My first venture into the cookery forum! And I'm not sure this is really cookery...

... but anyway. My wife has decided that we need a juicer - mainly to force some goodness into the kids. We already have a blender, so can make smoothies OK. but has anyone any juicer recommendations? Either specific makes/models or just features we should be looking for. From my point of view it should be easily cleanable or diswasher-able as I know which bit of the task is being lined up for me!!!

Any help at all appreciated -

Cheers! ZtH

weeelllllll....a blender is NOT s smoothie maker for starters!

he thing about a REAL SMOOTHY maker is they is has a BLUNT SPINNER....its not sharp...it BATTERS the cells apart, and does not chop them.

That is a common misconception. So a real smoothy was made in a machine with a BLUNT EDGE spinning at high speed.

Anyway....back to Juicers....they cut the fruit/veg to pieces and then use a centrifuge to spin the juice out, leaving you with the dry pulp inside.

Is that what ya want? :)

I get the feeling a SMOOTHY MAKER is what you need. Cos thats for the thick jobbies.

Will your kids REALLY drink carrot and celery juice? Cos it aint got anywhere NEAR all the fibre in it that the SMOOTHY MAKER would have.

PLUS a smoothie maker normally has a glass jug which just unclips and gets rinsed. Where as a JUICER is a big old boy, with a centrifuge and needs lots of cleaning and has filters to sperate the juice.

My kids? Well I aint got kids, but if I did, I'd want them eating WHOLE VEG AND FRUIT, and thats smoothie !

and its cheaper :) and you can add ice cream and stuff to start them off :) Yoghurt too....:)

a bit more to help....the Kenwood ones have a tap. Either good idea for ease of pouring or bad idea for pain in arse of cleaning ;)

Blimey - three replies, Zak!

Well, you'll have to explain a bit, please.

What difference does it make whether a smoothie is made with a sharp or blunt blade? I'd guess it's something to do with the fibres?

My kids will drink smoothies, and eat veg and fruit, but we would also like to make fruit juice. Mostly because fizzy drinks are horrid for their teeth with meals, and we all like fruit juice. So yes, I guess we want something that takes out the juice and leaves the rest.

The idea of a difficult to clean tap is steering me away from a Kenwwod!

Thx for the help so far - do you have a juicer or smoothie maker yourself, Zak?

Cheers - ZtH

Bit OT but you got any smoothie recommendations Zakk? What combinations of things go well together? Got 2 litres of vanilla ice cream in the fridge too :D

a smoothie HAS to be crunched and smashed, not cut up....its how smoothies taste so good. Its a bit like this.....you have to destroy the cells in the veg or fruit, not cut them...they need hammering silly ;) you can use Ice Cubes in one ...a blade will never do that.

I do not own either. The reason I know is cos me and Sair went to the Good Food Show in Birmingham and inteneded to buy a JUICER and realised we needed a SMOOTHIE MAKER for what we wanted.

ie Smoothies, with all the good bits in, not just the juice.

The only smoothie maker I have seen that I wanted to own had a simple glass top jug, with the blunt blade thing built in and it just sat on a plinth with a motor. Glass top....not plastic, so not scratches and you can wash it HOT.

Smoothies are all sorts of flavours, and I'd suggest combos of fruit and veg plus something unusual in each.....Orange and celery with black pepper, carrot brocolli and touch of creme freche.

Plus you can use them for lunch. No kidding....a stick of brocolli, two sticks of celery, and an apple...superb :)

My mum has a juicer, gathering dust in her cupboard iirc.

They essentially work with a plunger pushing whatever you're juicing down onto a fine grating blade spinning at high speed, the pulp is thrown against a mesh and the centrifugal speed extracts the juice.

My mum's one has about 5 different parts to it and is dishwasher safe.

Its a Kenwood, from memory, but I know that you can get cheaper Morphy Richards or Russell Hobbs ones in John Lewis etc. Most makers have recognised that their kit has to be easy to clean and re-assemble, so they're all much of a muchness nowadays.

I reckon its best to go to John Lewis or somewhere similar and have a fiddle, then buy online, cos it'll be cheaper.