Product Review: Dash Blender

By Matthew Heaggans

In my search for a workhorse of a blender that didn't actually cost the equivalent of an actual horse, I considered many options and even purchased one near total lemon, the Ninja.  It's brittle, square bowl and flimsy (though razor sharp) blade assembly failed me time and again and left me feeling frustrated that I hadn't just doled out the cash for a Vitaprep and kept it moving.

Having perused Amazon, Ebay and the like for a deal, I was surprised when I saw a Vitaprep on sale at Sam's club for a very reasonable $200.  I practically ran to grab one and beat it to the checkout as I assumed it was some sort of pricing mistake that would be quickly sorted.

Upon closer inspection I found that it wasn't a Vita family blender at all.  It was a "Dash", something I hadn't encountered.  The Prep bowl is virtually identical to the Vita family bowl, but the base is MUCH larger.  The Dash boasts a 1400 Watt motor with 2 1/4 horsepower, very carefully calculated, I'm sure, from the days when horses were the primary method used to make smoothies.  There were a host of digital programs for making soups, purees, ices and pretty much everything else.  I stared at it for a very long time, kitchen snobbery and the sting of the near useless nature of the ninja ringing in my ears.  My nose turned up in derision and I left it lay.

Photo courtesy of by dash.com

Forced to continue to use my crumbling catastrophe of a Ninja again and again, I did a bit more research, but was hard pressed to find many objective reviews.  The ones I did find fairly glowed, but I wasn't convinced.

On a subsequent trip, I gave in and tossed it in the cart (by toss, I mean placed it very gently).  Wh.en I finally had the occasion to use it the first thing I noticed, lifting it out of the box, was that it had some heft.

The Dash a tough thing to find a home for on a counter or shelf.  The base is 9 inches in diameter and the whole contraption is nearly 20 inches in height.  I was dismayed by all of the digital options.  I know how to use a blender after all, so ignoring them, I began assembling a North Carolina BBQ sauce in the bowl.  Mustard, honey, molasses, whole veggies including simply peeled and lightly roasted ginger....  I loaded it up, exhausting the entire two liter capacity with the thickest chunkiest mess I could possibly assault it with.  I pressed the on button and was thoroughly impressed.  In less than a minute there was nothing left of the veggies and shortly the entire mixture had been heated to a smooth, steamy and delicious sauce that left nothing of note in a fine mesh strainer.

I accepted the tool as a permanent fixture and continued to be pleased with it time and again by it's raw power.

My next chance to be impressed was when I was making jerk seasoning.  It's not the ease with which the veggies and herbs were blended that made the impression, though they were easily dispatched.  It was the fact that the olive oil and vinegar emulsified within seconds of blending.

I decided to test the emulsification power of the machine.  I used 1:1 water to vegetable oil and no emulsifiers. This is what happened.

A note, I saw the box of Barilla pasta in the background.  I threw it on the ground.  Then picked it up and put it in the trash, because throwing it on the ground wasn't an adult response.

We all know how difficult emulsions are to make and maintain, and this one was solid and stable and remained unbroken at the time I'm disposed of it.  I was completely sold at this point.  A few pulses and our frozen powders are much finer that we can achieve in the robot coupe.  There's nothing I've put in the Dash, so far, that it can't handle.

I can mention the bulk of the machine as a definite negative as well as the fact that there is no center cap for the lid, only a tamper, but it doesn't really affect my perception of value.  The deal that I found at Sam's club was prime as the product is sold on the site and Amazon at $399, but even that would be a significant savings over a vita product.  I won't say that this product is superior, but I will say that is is a solid contender in the professional power tool department and a good option for those of us working with big needs on tiny budgets.

This is an unpaid review, and one cook's opinion.

1967

Ah....  1967.

     As I stood looking at an oddly placed but somewhat inspirational mural of old Gourmet magazine covers; this one cover in particular stood out to me.  I looked at it for a long time.  It's, quite frankly, hideous.  I tried to imagine what it was.  Curious, I turned to google.  

     If you'd like to buy a copy of the June 67 copy of Gourmet in excellent condition, I now know a guy...  a few, as a matter of fact.   

     As far as I can decipher, it's a chau froid of fish.  Likely poached fish, draped in a fish aspic, coated in a mayonnaise gel.  It was, obviously, high cuisine in it's day and countless culinary aficionados likely toiled in pursuit of this ideal.  You take a fish apart, you put a fish back together in a different way.      

     Now, it's not a way that very many people want to eat these days, but people did it, and felt accomplished simply because they could.

     It seems a little silly, as you look at it.  That stupid fish, staring at you.

     And judging.

This image property of Modernist Cuisine

    You do it too...  says the chau froid fish.     

      And it would be right, most cooks do.  That's the cutting edge.  50 years ago it was a fish.  Now it's a grill, or a burger, or chicken/duck/turkey.  A whole other country's cuisine.

     We wanna take it apart and put it back together with something else from somewhere else because we're all struggling to do something new; something no one has ever seen before.  We're struggling to find our place, and in a lot of ways the US's place in a world of thousand year old food traditions.

     Nathan Myhvold and his team are leading the charge of a generation of cooks that like to take things apart and then put them back together again in new and inventive ways.

     Hopefully I'll be forgiven my use of this image, but it demonstrates what I see as today's version of the chau froid fish, executed by forward thinking chefs the world around.  Ferran Adria.  Jose Andres.  Wylie Dufrense.    We're using equipment, techniques and chemicals to make caviars, creams, airs and crisps which transform ingredients into something unexpected.  Culinary aficionados the world around likely toil in pursuit of an ideal.

     

     This idea, this Ohio Chef Collective, is meant to regionalize this drive.  Inform and encourage the use of Ohio things by Ohio people (life-time or transplanted) in Ohio ways to make Ohio food.


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