What is better blender or food processor, juicer or chopper: device specifications

A blender is one of the appli­ances most com­mon­ly found in the kitchen. Such pop­u­lar­i­ty is due to the wide func­tion­al­i­ty of this device.

Its main pur­pose is to grind solids, but with the help of addi­tion­al attach­ments, it can also mix liq­uids, beat eggs and per­form many oth­er oper­a­tions.

How­ev­er, the mar­ket offers oth­er devices that can do some tasks bet­ter than a blender.

Choos­ing the right instru­ment ulti­mate­ly depends on your needs.

Why do you need a blender and what is it like?

The work of the blender is based on the rota­tion of sharp steel knives. This design makes it easy to grind fruits and veg­eta­bles, meat, it can also be used to crack ice, nuts or crack­ers.

The abil­i­ty to grind a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct is pri­mar­i­ly deter­mined by the pow­er of the device. It is worth not­ing that blenders are man­u­al and sta­tion­ary.

A hand blender con­sists of a han­dle with a motor and con­trol but­tons, on which a noz­zle with met­al knives is put on.

When work­ing, such a blender is low­ered into a con­tain­er. The com­plete set of dif­fer­ent mod­els depends on their cost, more expen­sive devices may have a whisk attach­ment for whip­ping liq­uid and semi-liq­uid prod­ucts, as well as a spe­cial bowl for chop­ping sol­id ingre­di­ents.

A sta­tion­ary blender is a con­tain­er with a con­tain­er where rotat­ing steel blades are placed.. To grind food with such a blender, it is nec­es­sary to place the nec­es­sary com­po­nents in a bowl, close it with a lid and turn on the device at a cer­tain pow­er.

Of course, the blender has its pros and cons.

The ver­sa­til­i­ty of a blender can be very con­di­tion­al, since addi­tion­al func­tions (beat­ing or chop­ping) do not work as well as when using spe­cial sep­a­rate devices.

Food processor and its functionality

The food proces­sor, as the name implies, com­bines many of the most diverse func­tions nec­es­sary for cook­ing. He is able to chop, chop, mix, whip var­i­ous foods, chop meat, squeeze juice.

Types of com­bines depend on their func­tion­al­i­ty. Rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, a com­bine can com­bine such devices: blender + meat grinder, blender + mix­er + dough mix­er, blender + juicer, etc.

Before choos­ing a com­bine, you need to under­stand well which fea­tures are real­ly use­ful to you and which are not. For quick grind­ing or mix­ing of prod­ucts, you can pur­chase a com­pact and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive device.

If you have a large fam­i­ly for which you need to cook a lot and often a vari­ety of dish­es, then a mas­sive food proces­sor with many attach­ments and func­tions will be an indis­pens­able option..

If you com­pare a com­bine with a blender, then you need to under­stand that the blender is designed for grind­ing and mix­ing prod­ucts.. The food proces­sor, thanks to its attach­ments, can per­form much more tasks.

The blender, as a rule, is com­plet­ed with one (max­i­mum two) bowls and sev­er­al noz­zles. The har­vester also has a huge num­ber of bowls, a vari­ety of knives and graters.

There is also a pure­ly visu­al dif­fer­ence: a food proces­sor is quite large, it needs a lot of space, and a blender can often fit in a small cor­ner or in a draw­er (if we talk about a man­u­al mod­el), due to its more com­pact dimen­sions.

The cost of the har­vester is much high­er, as it has a com­plex design and has many addi­tion­al noz­zles and acces­sories that expand the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the device.

A sim­pler blender, respec­tive­ly, is much cheap­er.

Chopper Application

The chop­per is a cross between a food proces­sor and the usu­al man­u­al cut­ting of prod­ucts. As a rule, this device con­sists of a bowl on which a han­dle is put on top.

Chop­pers allow you to fine­ly chop both whole foods and large pieces.

Chopped food can be added to a sal­ad, or processed in some oth­er way. Depend­ing on the method of grind­ing, these devices are divid­ed into chop­pers and mul­ti-cut­ters.

The main work­ing ele­ment of the chop­per is a rotat­ing impeller knife. Such a device is even capa­ble of whip­ping some liq­uid prod­ucts (sauces, pan­cake dough, creams). The qual­i­ty of cut­ting depends on the oper­at­ing time of the knives, as well as on their loca­tion.

With a low place­ment of the blades, you will get a puree mix­ture, and with a high place­ment, a fair­ly large cut. As a rule, the height of the knives can be adjust­ed.

It is worth not­ing that the chop­per does not give a uni­form con­sis­ten­cy: the fin­ished mix­ture will con­sist of both small and larg­er par­ti­cles.

A homo­ge­neous com­po­si­tion can only be achieved by grind­ing prod­ucts to a puree state.

Mul­ti-cut­ters have rotat­ing discs, on which a notch of dif­fer­ent sizes and shapes is applied..

Such devices can chop and cut prod­ucts into slices, and the par­ti­cles will always have the same size.

Whip­ping or stir­ring liq­uid prod­ucts with the help of mul­ti-cut­ters will not work. Usu­al­ly mul­ti-cut­ters are not equipped with their own bowl, so they are used in their dish­es, like a hand blender.

A chop­per is in many ways sim­i­lar to a blender, both in func­tion­al­i­ty and appear­ance. It is worth not­ing that the chop­per always has a bowl for grind­ing food at the bot­tom, while for a sta­tion­ary blender it is installed on top..

Using a juicer in the kitchen

Juicers are a com­plete­ly sep­a­rate class of devices that dif­fer wide­ly in func­tion­al­i­ty and pur­pose. How­ev­er, in any case, they all serve to per­form one task — squeez­ing juice.

Types of juicers:

• For cit­rus fruits. Allows you to get juice only from cit­rus fruits, has a small capac­i­ty and com­pact size.
• Screw. Such a device works on the prin­ci­ple of a press — the prod­uct is placed under the auger, which moves and squeezes the juice out of the prod­uct by force. This type is the most pro­duc­tive, as it can squeeze the max­i­mum juice out of the pulp.
• Grid or cen­trifu­gal. The most com­mon type, the work­ing ele­ment of which are rotat­ing knives placed in a con­tain­er with mesh walls. Dur­ing oper­a­tion, the prod­uct is crushed and rubbed through the mesh, due to which juice is released, and unnec­es­sary pulp is auto­mat­i­cal­ly removed into a spe­cial con­tain­er. The per­for­mance of such a juicer depends on its pow­er, the most pow­er­ful devices can process hard fruits and veg­eta­bles.

The advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of juicers depend on their type and pow­er. It is worth con­sid­er­ing in more detail the dif­fer­ences between a juicer and a blender:

In gen­er­al, the choice again depends on the needs that arise in the kitchen.. The blender allows you to car­ry out a vari­ety of oper­a­tions, but you can­not get juice with it. If the pres­ence of fresh­ly squeezed juice is nec­es­sary for you, then in this case you can not do with­out a high-qual­i­ty juicer.

Comparison of blender, food processor, juicer and grinder

This table lists the var­i­ous oper­a­tions that can (or can­not) be per­formed by the devices dis­cussed in this arti­cle.

It should be not­ed that the com­par­i­son took into account the pos­si­bil­i­ty of expand­ing the func­tion­al­i­ty of the device due to addi­tion­al attach­ments.. So, for exam­ple, a blender can beat eggs if there is a whisk attach­ment, and a juicer can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be used to grind fruit, although this is not includ­ed in its pur­pose.

Type of trans­ac­tion	Blender	har­vester	chop­per	Juicer
Shred­ding vegetables/fruits	Yes	Yes	Yes	medi­um
Puree prepa­ra­tion	Yes	Yes	medi­um	No
chop­ping meat	medi­um	Yes	Yes	No
crush­ing nuts	medi­um	Yes	Yes	medi­um
ice pick	medi­um	Yes	Yes	No
Cock­tail prepa­ra­tion	medi­um	Yes	No	No
Beat­ing whites / yolks / eggs	medi­um	Yes	No	No
Mak­ing home­made may­on­naise	No	Yes	No	No
Liq­uid dough for pan­cakes	medi­um	Yes	medi­um	No
Thick sour cream dough	medi­um	Yes	medi­um	No
Dough for bak­ing pies / cheese­cakes	No	Yes	No	No
juice squeeze	No	Yes	medi­um	Yes
coffee/spice grinder	No	Yes	Yes	No
Slic­ing a spe­cif­ic shape / grater	No	medi­um	Yes	No

If you are faced with the ques­tion — what to choose, a blender, or some oth­er device — you need to clear­ly under­stand what pur­pose var­i­ous devices have. The blender is good at grind­ing and mix­ing prod­ucts, in addi­tion, its func­tion­al­i­ty can be slight­ly expand­ed with attach­ments.

You can’t get juice with a blender, a juicer will do just fine. If you only need grind­ing, then you should choose a spe­cial grinder. The food proces­sor, in turn, will per­fect­ly cope with all of the above tasks..

Useful video

From the video you will learn which is bet­ter — a blender or a juicer: