Super blender - like having a Ferrari in the kitchen

Did you hear about the chef who put his iPhone in the blender? He was trying to make Apple juice. That cook is either one of the dumbest culinary school graduates ever -- or, perhaps, like most professional chefs, he has a Vitamix.

The Vitamix and similar high-powered blenders easily will pulverize an iPhone or, for that matter, just about anything put into them. If you don't believe me, take a look at some of the "experiments" run by rival manufacturer Blendtec and posted on YouTube. There you can watch the Blendtec "blending" a Nike athletic shoe, a pair of skis, golf balls, an electric guitar, pork and beans (in the can), a Justin Bieber CD and even pieces of its Vitamix counterpart.

Aside from the Bieber CD, these are not among the more useful applications of so-called super blenders, but they do serve to demonstrate their enormous power. That power can be the key to a healthier diet -- a concern for those of us who after the excesses of the holidays have resolved to focus on waist management in the New Year.

Because high-powered blenders do more than merely slice or chop but with blades revolving at over 200 miles per hour actually obliterate their contents, they break down cell walls, doing a better job of extracting nutrients from whole fruits and vegetables, their makers claim, than we could simply through chewing and digestion.

Consequently, these machines are the darlings of the health and wellness crowd, especially men, who make up nearly half of Vitamix purchasers. After all, modern men are comfortable in the kitchen (perhaps even devotees of Iron Chef, where Michael Symon introduced the Vitamix to the foodie viewing audience), and being involved parents are as picky about their children's diet as any mother. They do not find this emasculating. Indeed, to them a high-powered blender is akin to having a Ferrari in the kitchen.

The Vitamix, the so-called Ferrari of blenders, makes short work of fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients. (TOM HARTE)

A Vitamix blender on display at a branch of the Williams-Sonoma gourmet cookware emporiums. (TOM HARTE)

Thus, my son-in-law recently acquired a Vitamix. After watching him put the machine through its paces preparing healthful foods for my granddaughter, I have to admit that if any blender is actually worth $500, this one is.

It's not just how a Vitamix can turn out a delicious yet healthy smoothie (there's a reason you'll find the machine or one like it at Smoothie King, Planet Smoothie and similar stores), but it's all of the other things it can do. For example, it can crush or shave ice (ordinary blenders have trouble doing this), grind meat, process pasta or pie dough, whip cream, churn butter, turn granulated sugar into powdered sugar, make ice cream, and, just as easily, because its whirring blades create so much friction, cook soup until it is steaming.

This is a machine that Polish immigrant Stephen Poplawski, who in 1922 invented the first blender, would be proud of. So would Fred Waring, the band leader and former engineering student, who helped perfect and popularize the blender in the late 1930s, often by showing off its potential for making cocktails, especially frozen daiquiris.

But no one would be more proud than William Grover Barnard, a traveling salesman who founded the Vitamix Company and in 1949 introduced his high-powered blender in what was probably the first television infomercial.

A pioneer in the health food industry, he would no doubt agree with the sentiment contained in a banner that hangs over the company's assembly line in Cleveland: "The Vitamix is a blender like a predator drone is a slingshot."

Various Viatmix models on display at a branch of Williams-Sonoma. (TOM HARTE)

Garden Green Smoothie

Adapted from the Vitamix Cookbook, this recipe assumes a high-powered blender, which will make short work of the ingredients even if put into the machine practically whole. Blenders of less power will require chopping the ingredients more finely in advance.

1/4 cup water

1 orange, peeled, halved, and seeded

1 celery stalk, halved

1 small carrot, halved

1 green apple, cored and quartered

1/2 medium zucchini, cut into large chunks

1 cup romaine lettuce

1 cup kale, spine removed

A variety of models of the Vitamix super blender on display at a branch of Williams-Sonoma. (TOM HARTE)

1/2 cup parsley leaves

2 cups ice cubes

Place ingredients in blender container in the order given and secure lid. Starting at slow speed, blend until desired consistency, tamping down contents as necessary. If using a Vitamix, select the smoothie cycle.

Tom Harte's book, "Stirring Words," is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Fridays 8:49 a.m. on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699.