Lucie Loves... Food // #Triedandtested | Comparing super-food NutriBlasts with NutriBullet vs juicing
Smoothies, juices, or coconut water. What’s your go-to health-kick?
I’ve been trying out the NutriBullet and have whizzed up quite a storm in our kitchen, along with the majority of the fruit and veg aisle at our local supermarket.
I’m going to start this post by saying that entering the world of juicing or smoothie-making is not for the faint-hearted. Firstly, it’s quite an investment. You need to buy a machine. A decent one can cost upwards of £90. (The NutriBullet costs from £99). You then need to go shopping for a shed-load of fruit and veg. This can seem quite daunting, if you’re like us and don’t always splash out on a colourful spectrum on the good-stuff.
I also opted to buy a wide range of nuts and seeds from our local health food store, Oliver’s Wholefood Store. This, again, was expensive. Some of these bags of nuts cost about a fiver!
However, throwing myself in as I always do with my blog challenges, I was prepared to pay out a bit to ensure that my experience was authentic and that I used the NutriBullet as it was designed to be used.
The NutriBullet kit includes:
- an extractor blade,
- a milling blade (the milling blade is to make your own seed and nut mixes to add even more goodness to your super-food smoothies).
- the power base
- 24oz tall cup
- 1-18oz short cup and 1 handled comfort lip ring
- 1-18oz handled short cup and 1 comfort lip ring
- 2 stay fresh resealable lids for preparing smoothies or ingredients that can be kept in the fridge or taken to the office.
- 1 user-guide and recipe book
- 1 pocket nutritionist
First off, I experimented with making my own guacamole and was amazed at how effortlessly this machine whizzed up the ingredients. I only gave it a few short blasts, ensuring that I’d removed the avocado nut and skin, as I wanted a dip that had a chunky consistency to go with my chicken fajitas.
Over the course of a week or so I tried my hand at creating fresh fruit and veg smoothies, experimenting with different flavour combinations - some better than others.
The NutriBullet guide recommends that you use 50% greens and 50% fruit. It has tons of recipe suggestions. It even comes with a shopping list incase you’re so new to fruit and veg shopping that you don’t know what to buy…
I decided to experiment with a carrot, ginger, orange and grape recipe. I added one half of the ingredients into our juicer and then added the other half to the NutriBullet.
Once processed, I find that the juicer leaves you with almost half a jug of waste material, which I usually throw away as we don’t have a garden to compost it. The NutriBullet, on the other hand, simply blitzes all of the ingredients together into one smoothie - no waste (except any peel or seeds you’ve had to remove). It is important that you don’t get greedy like I did and try and put too many fruits and veggies into the NutriBullet. If you do this you’ll end up with a soup-like consistency that doesn’t feel very pleasant to drink.
To ensure a great result every time make sure that you leave enough room for the water and don’t overfill it.
The choice of ingredients you use it also key. I once added a red pepper and it ruined the whole drink. Yuck. Some of the best combinations start with simple ingredients like red berries and banana. You can whizz them up with natural yoghurt and oats for a great breakfast drink.
I also really like the green juices like apple, kale and spinach with a bit of strawberry for sweetness.
One of the great things about the NutriBullet compared to our juicer is that it is really really easy to clean, which makes it less of a pain to get out and use regularly. JMG also used it as a food processor to blitz some onions and tomatoes for a home-made curry recipe that he was trying out and was very impressed.
Do you have any smoothie recipes that you think we should try? Get in touch.
Photography © Lucie Kerley
Disclaimer: Thank you to NutriBullet for allowing me to test run the product on my blog.