Mommy Perfect reviews the premium Nutri Ninja blender system from the engineers at Shark/Ninja.
My food processor is a 15-year-old wedding gift that my dear husband Mr. Perfect broke the lid’s locking mechanism from by strong-arming it the first time he tried to use it. I’ve suffered ever since by having to jam a tooth pick into the safety catch whenever I need to process food, which tends to be infrequently because it’s annoying. (Yeah, first world problems and all that, whatever.) When I recently decided to make some Better Than Sabra Hummus with my goofy old food processor setup, and I couldn’t get the jammed-up tooth pick to push on the safety release button at just the right spot, and in a moment of exasperation I tossed the darn thing into the garbage, grabbed my car keys, and set off to the store for a new one.
I had intended to get a basic food processor sufficient enough to blend hummus, as I rarely used my last one all that often, but as I browsed the aisles of the big box chain superstore with the multitudes of fancy food processing devices, my eyes were drawn to the sexy-looking box of a Ninja multi-purpose blending/mixing machine. I wouldn’t normally pay heed to infomercial brands, but I’ve had such a good experience with my Ninja Coffee Bar — and I still think it’s one of the best coffee machines on the market (that’s not a paid plug) — that I gave the Nutri Ninja blender a look.
It’s a glorified blender with a gnarly-looking multi-blade attachment for power blending things like hummus or liquifying fruits and vegetables. I wasn’t in the market for a blender, but I’ve had the same basic Osterizer blender that I bought at a Montgomery Wards department store in the 1990s when I first moved out of my parent’s house. Monty Wards doesn’t even exist anymore, making my blender a true relic. With a risk-free 60-day money back guarantee, I decided to give the Nutri Ninja blender a try.
They have several models and variations available; the one I took home was the Nutri Ninja Auto-IQ Compact System with Smooth Boost as it seemed to have the best mix of options for the price. I got it home, unpacked (which is always fun), and jumped right into blending things up. The construction feels very sturdy, everything locks in place well with no wobbly or flimsy bits. The motor has horsepower for days, and the base locks to your counter with a suction cup mechanism that also has an easy release button if you need to move it. The front panel has several feature buttons, but isn’t overly complicated, which is important to me because I find excessive features to be mostly useless and just confuses the whole process. My front-load washing machine for example has 38 different wash settings, of which I use two, but I digress.
The first thing I made with my new Nutri Ninja blender was the hummus that I initially set out to make, which got this whole adventure started. I was accustomed to blending hummus with my now discarded food processor and I knew how long it took to get it smooth. This Nutri Ninja blender churned out the smoothest, creamiest hummus in 1/4 of the time. Sweet!
My old Oster blender was fine for mixing protein powder into milk, but anything more involved wouldn’t come out too well, so I wasn’t accustomed to liquifying whole fruits and veggies, in fact the whole notion of drinking liquified vegetables sounded gross. Feeling adventuresome I experimented with making spinach and fruit smoothies for my kids (recipe included with the blender), which I never would have tried before. The Nutri Ninja box says it will break the veggies down so smooth that you won’t even notice the fibers. Yes I was highly skeptical, but the kids, who hate spinach, had no idea it was there. I tried recipes with whole apples, oranges, avocado, even celery, and all sorts of smoothies recipes. All of them came out smooth like a milkshake with nary a trace of vegetable fiber and none of the recipes tasted like lawn clippings. Yay — I can feed the kids more veggies without complaints!
An important fact I soon learned about the Nutri Ninja blender is that the order to which you load the ingredients for making smoothies and such actually matters. The Nutri Ninja Blender comes with a handy quick reference sheet of the ideal loading order; fruit first, ice last, that sort of thing. My natural skepticism forced me to test this “rule” by making two smoothies, one with their suggested ingredient loading order and the other in reverse. I can attest that you will get better results by following their suggested loading order.
Of course it works great with dips and such, like hummus, guacamole, tzatziki sauce — all of it comes out great. Any blended soup like my Super Easy Harvest Pumpkin Soup comes out perfectly creamy smooth. It includes various blades and containers for different purposes so you can customize what you are making. I tried making blended ice cream treats (think Diary Queen Blizzards). It even has a dough mixing blade for cookies, breads, or my authentic Scottish Scones — the dough attachment does just what is says it will with ease.
For adding hidden healthy veggies to your family’s diet, and convenience in kitchen prep, the Nutri Ninja Auto-IQ Compact System with Smooth Boost is another winner from the folks at Shark/Ninja. Now every time I see something of theirs in the store I wonder if I might be missing out on some super useful appliance that needs to be bought right away.
Do you have a Nutri Ninja blender, or interested in getting one? Leave a comment or question in the comments section below.
This is not an advertisement for the Nutri Ninja Blender or any other product. Disclaimer: this article may contain affiliate links.
