Table Top Review: The Kenwood HB724 hand blender review – orange juice

For almost seven years, I worked as short-order cook in a cafeteria with service for up to 300 people. When I worked in a professional kitchen, all the equipment and tools we needed were professionally maintained, right at hand, and ready to go.  And after using the equipment, we had people whose job it was to clean up.  Not so in the home kitchen, where there is limited space, and where I have to do the clean up myself.

So for me, the main challenge of electric kitchen gadgets (like blenders and mixers and juicers) is that it is difficult to obtain a net overall win/win situation: the needed overhead (pulling them out, setting them up, cleaning them up, stowing them) quite often exceeds the pleasure or value or time savings provided by the gadget.

In attempt to rebalance this equation in my favor, I recently purchased a Kenwood HB724 hand blender.

In the coming blog entries, I will give some table top reviews of using my new Kenwood blender, and especially try to answer the question: was it so easy and convenient and effective that I will be using it for this purpose again?

The Kenwood HB724 hand blender makes orange juice

It will be interesting to see how much juice can be made from one large orange, shown here:
Juice1

I cut off the peel quickly and roughly, leaving bits for added vitamins and fiber:

Juice2

Into to the Kenwood blending attachment, and attach the motor wand to the top:

Juice3

And after about 20 seconds of blending, it makes a full glass!

Juice4

Overall comments and feedback

The actual grinding was much faster than I expected, I think due to the very well designed blades that cause a very good mixing.  Assembling the unit was also easier than expected, because the design is exceptional and all the pieces fit together easily, just by feel. Grinding was easy, because the normal power button and the turbo power button are both very easy to press.  And the grinding attachment has a rubber ring that prevents it from sliding on the table top. Pouring from the mixing attachment into a glass was also straightforward and entailed no mess. Cleanup was also easier than I expected, because the plastic is water repellent – just a gentle rinse in the sink was all that was needed.

Was it worth it?

Yes, absolutely!

Negatives & Suggestions to Kenwood for improvement?

Nothing.

Further reviews on this topic needed?

The Kenwood cut through the orange like butter, but oranges are soft.  It will be interesting to repeat this recipe with ice or with fruit such as apples that are tougher and may be more difficult to blend.

Would I do this again?  

No fuss no muss – I’d use the Kenwood for fresh orange juice every day of the week and twice on Sundays! Since I like pulpy orange juice, the results were delicious. Including cleanup, it hardly required more time to set up and prepare than it would to open a carton of store-bought orange juice.