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Ok, so there is some pretty amazing ice cream recipes in this world, most of which can be bought in stores. Ice-cream isn’t exactly the healthiest option as far as snacks, and although brands like Halo Top and Enlightened are pretty great as far as a low-calorie option, we think there’s probably no better way to know exactly what goes into your ice cream than to make it yourself. While there are plenty of ways to go about doing so, a Vitamix or Blendtec blender are a pretty awesome choice for your ice cream recipes.
Both companies offer blender models with an automatic setting for ice-cream recipes, so you know that the texture will be perfect. That said, they’re still a few things you’ll need to keep in mind to avoid air pockets which are a common issue when making ice cream in your blender; for one, you don’t need to be an expert but you’ll want to know how to control your blender speeds and the order you add your ingredients matters a lot.
There are plenty of other benefits to making your own ice-cream; you can make healthier versions by adding organic fruit and healthy veggies into your blend along with other nutrients like flax seeds. You can actually blend the ingredients together so well that those people in your life that hate veggies and fruits won’t even notice because the Blendtec and Vitamix blenders are so good that any hard ingredient, whether it’s ice, seeds, nuts, or rinds, turn into a smooth, silky texture.
Making it yourself also allows you to sweeten with healthier ingredients like dates and honey, instead of sugars and fructose, although you can use that as well. Either way, making it yourself will give you way more control over what you are eating, which is why we love promoting these blenders. Especially great for those with specific dietary needs. Then it’s more of a necessity than a luxury.
About Air Pockets
When making ice-cream, air pockets are the biggest hurdle, although luckily, there are ways to get around them. The first trick is adding ingredients in the right way so that the blender can pull down the ingredients quickly and easily and not get an air pocket. This order is recommended by both Blendtec and Vitamix, you want to add ingredients from soft to hard, i.e. liquid to ice. Softer ingredients first than harder ingredients on the top, with Ice being the last thing you add.
Ice Cream Recipe Ingredient Order
- Liquids first: Traditional ice cream uses milk or cream but there are plenty of ways to make frozen desert; juice, soy milk,nut milks, etc.
- Powders: Cocoa, protein, dare we say – greens (?!)
- Soft fruit, like bananas, strawberries, etc.
- Hard vegetables and hard fruits like apples, or roots like turmeric
- Nuts, seeds, leafy greens
- Ice
We started with Blendtec and compared the Blendtec Classic 575 to the Blendtec Designer 725. Then we worked through three Vitamix blenders, including Vitamix G Series 750, the Vitamix C Series 500, and the Vitamix S Series S50.
Blendtec
So. Right off the bat, the Blendtec Classic blender uses the Blendtec standard 64oz jar, or 2-quart jar, that has a somewhat narrow design and seemed to make the best tasting and perfectly blended ice cream for some reason. Blendtec blender company has 3 jars to choose from. The Blendtec Wildside Jar, the Standard Jar, and the Twister Jar.
The texture was smooth, rich, and well missed. No chunks, nothing left behind but smooth, awesome ice cream. Although this model doesn’t have an ice-cream setting, we were able to blend it by using the manual push buttons pretty well. The digital interface allowed for an awesome custom blend and the final result was delish. You don’t want to over blend an ice cream recipe, it’s almost like a sorbet or ACAI Bowl but slightly thicker. You’ll see a star shape form at the top of the jar when it’s down.
The Blendtec Designer blender has a 90oz Wildside jar that has a wider base, so you can fit more ingredients and make larger poritions. The Wildside Jar has a larger, 4-inch blade which pulverizes anything you put in the jar. We think that although this blender jar performed great, this one gets second place; the ice cream that came out of the Wildside blender jar had a harder texture than the standard Blendtec Jar on the Classic 575 blender model.
We suspect this may have had something to do with the size of the container but we can’t be sure. That said, the Blendtec Designer blended every ingredient without any trouble at all, and because it has an ice-cream setting, we had to do virtually nothing other than add ingredients, hit the button, and let it do its thing. The blender was able to make the ice cream on it’s own with no help from us.
Pros/Cons to Blendtec
Both of these blenders have a fantastic vortexing capability,which reduces the need for a tamper; the blender just pulls the ingredients down into the blades with no problem. The resulting texture is fine as silk,and applies to all foods, not just ice cream. A few bullet points:
- Having an ice-cream setting is pretty amazing. It essentially eliminates the need to stand-over the machine and allows it’s users to leave the Blendtec Designer 725 to do its thing, while the Blendtec Classic requires that you custom blend the ice cream using manual speeds, it also works great.
- A disadvantage to Blendtec Blenders is that they don’t generally offer tampers, so if there’s a chance that your ingredients get stuck, then the best bet is to shake out the air pocket to move ingredients around, and start the blender again on a low speed first than move it slowly to a higher speed. A spatula can also be used to work down air-pockets etc. You don’t want the blade do spin and hit nothing, that’s no good. Than you’ll have to stop the blender and shake it out, and start over.
Vitamix
The Vitamix 750 blenders come with the low profile 90oz container which is equal to the Blendtec Wildside Jar. These companies are going toe to toe with each other for the best blender for ice cream. The Low Profile container also has a 4-inch blade and a larger capacity.
This Low Profile Container is easier to clean and use than other Vitamix containers. This Vitamix 750 blender was the most effective and simplest to use for ice-cream making. The container was easier to deal with in terms of pushing ingredients into the blades compared to Standard tall container. There’s also an automatic ice-cream setting that changes speeds for you, so we didn’t end up needing to use the speed dial. The newer Vitamix blender models have an automatic ice cream setting, along with a few other automatic features for smoothies and soups. The 750 Vitamix is a good choice for ice cream recipes.
The standard 64oz container that comes standard on the Vitamix C 5200 proved to be a little more difficult to use , and is a bit narrower, which actually made it harder to press ingredients into blades. On the plus side, this blender has an ice-cream setting, so it changes speeds for you. Overall, not bad, and gave us a nice, smooth ice-cream, just took a little more work than the Low Profile Container. Other blender models in this series include the Vitamix 5200, the Vitamix Turbo Blend, and the Vitamix 500, all good machines which can all make ice cream recipes.
This Vitamix S Series has a smaller, narrow 40 oz container which proved difficult to work with. The design of the Vitamix S 50 doesn’t allow for large amounts of ingredients which is tough because you always want to add in everything you want into your ice cream recipe. So you can’t make large portions, and another bummer is you can’t add whole ingredients like you can with the other Vitamix blender models; you’ll have to chop them into smaller sizes to be able to fit them into the container, major bummer. That said, the tamper is not only helpful, but also necessary for the Vitamix S Series because the ingredients don’t get pulled down as easy, because the container is narrow and small.
Pros/Cons
The Vitamix Personal blender S Series is at an overall disadvantage for various reasons, mainly the container size and narrow base makes it difficult to blend and add ingredients. The Vitamix C series blender models, on the other hand, work great and allow for easy blending, you can also interchange containers and upgrade to a Low Profile Container if you have a C Series with a standard container.
The Legacy Vitamix G Series was the quietest of the blenders we tried, as well as being the easiest to use, in part because of the low profile 90oz container. The Low Profile Container proved to be the best container Vitamix has for ice cream recipes, easy to add ingredients, easy to push them down with the tamper, easy blending.
In Conclusion
Both brands have characteristics that area similar and both are able to produce and give you what you want. Blendtec has digital technology that is extremely responsive for ice cream blends, the automatic settings on Blendtec blenders work great and their blade design is fantastic for pulverizing and pulling ingredients into the blades.
The Vitamix offers automatic settings, 2 different container options, and the tamper which comes in handy for not only ice cream recipes, but all recipes. Different Vitamix blender models offer different features but they all use the same 2 Containers.
One disadvantage about the Blendtec, however, is that if you should get an air pocket, it’ll be necessary to stop the blender, shake out the air pocket, and start the cycle all over again, while with the Vitamix you can push the ingredients down with the tamper as the blender is running so air pockets aren’t as big of an issue.
All in all, both blender brands can make a great ice-cream…if anything, the most important question for you is the type of design you’re looking for; digital Blendtec technology with push buttons or do you like the speed dial which comes on most Vitamix blender models. Leave your comments and questions below and we will try our best to monitor and answer them, thank you for reading, enjoy your blender.
