... One of the best names in kitchen appliances is, of course, Kenwood and I will now review the Kenwood Smoothie Concert.
Design
The design of the Kenwood Smoothie Concert is fairly simple really and is designed in a way that it will fit in with almost any kitchen, modern or not, meaning ... Read review
This Kenwood SB256 concert smoothie maker comes in a chrome finish with black detail, ... more
complete with 2 speed settings and pulse control. It has a 1.5 litre plastic jug and provides 500 watts of power to ensure you enjoy your smoothie. Other features include a stirring stick, handle with pouring lip on goblet and recipe book.
Postage & Packaging:from £4.85 Availability:refer to website
This Kenwood SB256 concert smoothie maker comes in a chrome finish with black detail, ... more
complete with 2 speed settings and pulse control. It has a 1.5 litre plastic jug and provides 500 watts of power to ensure you enjoy your smoothie. Other features include a stirring stick, handle with pouring lip on goblet and recipe book.
Postage & Packaging:£4.99 Availability:Usually dispatched within 4-5 business days...
This Kenwood SB256 concert smoothie maker comes in a chrome finish with black detail, ... more
complete with 2 speed settings and pulse control. It has a 1.5 litre plastic jug and provides 500 watts of power to ensure you enjoy your smoothie. Other features include a stirring stick, handle with pouring lip on goblet and recipe book.
Postage & Packaging:£4.99 Availability:Usually dispatched within 4-5 business days...
Advantages: Ease Of Use, Handy Front Tap, Easy To Clean, Good Looking Disadvantages: Lid Does Not Fully Seal
...kitchen appliances is, of course, Kenwood and I will now review the Kenwood Smoothie Concert.
==Design==
The design of the Kenwood Smoothie Concert is fairly simple really and is designed in a way that it will fit in with almost any kitchen, modern or not, meaning you could quite happily leave it out on the worktop along with the kettle and toaster, making it always ready for use. The base is made from tough ... ...you will notice with The Kenwood Smoothie Concert, over a normal blender, is the fact that the jug has a tap on the front of it. Where the jug fits in to the base and at the front, where the tap is, the base is curved inwards creating an area where you can hold, or stand, a cup or glass, in which to dispense you freshly blended smoothie from the tap built in to the jug. To the right of the tap are the four control buttons, and also the name 'Kenwood ... more
They are a fairly modern craze, smoothies, drinks made from loads of different fruits, and even vegetables, blended together with milk or yogurt or whatever else you can lay your hands on I suppose. Over the past few years the craze has seen smoothie bars opening up all over the place offering long menus of freshly mushed fruit etc..
Home made smoothies make a much healthier alternative to bottled and cartoned fruit juices and similar that we buy in the supermarket, as these quite often have all sorts of added flavourings and colourings, not to mention added sugar. Obviously the much healthier option is to make your own, then you will have full control over exactly what goes into it, to do this you will need a blender, liquidiser or, ideally, a smoothie maker. One of the best names in kitchen appliances is, of course, Kenwood and I will now review the Kenwood Smoothie Concert.
Design
The design of the Kenwood Smoothie Concert is fairly simple really and is designed in a way that it will fit in with almost any kitchen, modern or not, meaning you could quite happily leave it out on the worktop along with the kettle and toaster, making it always ready for use. The base is made from tough plastic, which is finished to look like shiny chrome or stainless steel. It is very similar to any blender in its design really, in that it is a fairly standard round shape and made up of a base with the controls on and with a jug that sits on top. The jug is made from frosted transparent plastic and is dishwasher safe which is very handy for cleaning.
The main difference you will notice with The Kenwood Smoothie Concert, over a normal blender, is the fact that the jug has a tap on the front of it. Where the jug fits in to the base and at the front, where the tap is, the base is curved inwards creating an area where you can hold, or stand, a cup or glass, in which to dispense you freshly blended smoothie from the tap built in to the jug. To the right of the tap are the four control buttons, and also the name 'Kenwood Smoothie Concert'. The jug also has a black lid with a hole in the middle, the hole has two fittings; a plug which fastens in and seals the top completely, and a 9" 'stick' which fits in and can be wiggled about to ensure all your bits of fruit are pushed in to the metal teeth and are blended nice and smoothly.
In Use
The Kenwood Smoothie Concert is extremely easy to use. It is advisable to clip in to place the lid and feed your fruit through the hole in the centre of it, then use the 'stick' piece described above to move everything around ensuring a nice smooth consistency is reached.
The best thing to do is decide what you would like in your smoothie, there are loads of smoothie recipe books out if you are struggling to come up with any ideas, then chop the ingredients in to smallish pieces, this will make them blend better. If you put all your fruit in fridge before blending, then obviouly the smoothie will be nice and cool, however you can add ice in the smoothie maker, or even frozen ingredients. Then you simply drop about half of your ingredients through the hole in the lid and blend away!
The Smoothie Concert has four control buttons on it, they are; pulse, smooth, mix and off. the last one of these is self explanatary, mix is, basically, 'slow', smooth is 'fast'. Pulse only spins when you press it, so if you have loaded the jug up with quite a few solids, you can give this a few presses first to get everything softened up a little before hitting mix or smooth, pulse is also very good for crushing ice, simply half fill the jug with ice and then hit pulse 8 - 10 times for about a second at a time, this gives you about a quarter of a jug of crushed ice. Once your ingridients are slightly mushy, you can then keep adding more a bit at a time until they are all in. Then hit 'mix' or 'smooth' and sit back for a minute or so until it is all blended to a pulp! Next serve via the handy tap at the front and enjoy!
The jug has measurments on the front on one side in ml up to 1500ml in 100ml increments, and on the other side it has recomended levels for a serving of two or four, for liquids or frozen ingridients. There is also a handle on the back of the jug so you can lift it out and pour the last of your smoothie out if it won't go through the tap. To clean, simply lift the jug away from the base and, like I mentioned above, it is dishwasher safe, however I find a really good rinse with hot water normally does the trick, and also it means you can open the tap up and run some water through that also. The base just simply wipes clean with a damp cloth very easily.
Recomended ?
Would I recomend this blender / smoothie maker? To be honest, we are not big smoothie drinkers in my house, but we are big cocktail fans, and the main reason for buying it was to make blended cocktails, however one of my wifes favourite blended cocktails has bannana in it so we have used it to blend fruit! I quite often make frozen cocktails in it also (a cocktail with crushed ice in it) and it copes with both of these jobs very well. The main reason we were drawn to this model was the tap on the front and in use this is very handy, as quite often you can spill a lot of your cocktail, or smoothie, when trying to pour it out in to a glass. We also make quite a lot of home made soup and, as we do not have another blender, we use the smoothie concert for blending this also. It makes short work of anything we have tried in it (including, carrot and corriander soup, broccoli and stilton and tomato), it has not been affected in any way by the temperature either. So I think it has been more than tested, even though it has never actually made a true smoothie, and we are more than happy with it. I think if it broke tomorrow, I would go out and buy the same one again, so yes, I would recomend it.
This all said, I have found one negative point, it is a very small problem but one I feel I should mention, and it is simply to say not to over fill the Smoothie Concert. When I say over fill I mean make sure it is no higher than the 1200ml marker on the front of the jug, even though it goes up to 1500ml. I fould this out the hard way the first time I made soup in it and I covered the kitchen, and myself, in very hot tomato soup, the lid does not seal properly! This might have been due to it having hot soup in it, when it is actually designed for cold drinks, however, I have not tested it above 1200ml since!! This is the only negative point I can come up with though and is not a problem at all if you know about it.
Recipes
Below are a few of our favourite blended cocktails, sorry there are no smoothies, although I suppose these are just alcoholic smoothies!! All measurments are approximate and are per serving:
Barman's Breakfast
Ingredients: 50ml Bailys, 25ml Frandgellico, 75ml Milk, 1/2 A Bannana, 6 Ice Cubes. Method: Pulse the ice cubes six or seven times and then add all the liquids, pulse this lot three or four times then add the bannana and press smooth, wait about 30 seconds and serve.
Frozen Margaritta
Ingredients: 50ml Tequila, 50ml Triple Sec, 3 Limes Juiced, 10 Ice Cubes. Method: Pulse the ice cubes six or seven times then add everything else pulse about the same again and then serve.
Strawberry Daiquiri
Ingredients: 100ml White Rum, 1/2 A Lemon Juiced, 8 Strawberries Cut In Half, Pinch Of Sugar, 6 Ice Cubes. Method: Pulse the ice six or seven times then the rum and lemon juice pulse again a few times then add the strawberries and sugar and press smooth for about 30 seconds, serve.
Price And Availability
I have just Googled it and the cheapest for a new one seems to be Amazon at £27.39 including post and packing, however we bough our earlier this year from a car boot sale and paid just £3.00!! For this we got a boxed like new version of this great blender, and I have to say since buying it I have seen about ten more at car boot sales ranging in price from the £3.00 we paid up to about a tenner, so it might be worth looking at your local car boot this weekend if you are after one!! There are also quite a few on ebay going for about the same money but plus postage.
Advantages: tasty smoothies, easy to use, easy to clean, healthy drinks. Disadvantages: noisy
I can be the world's worst person for buying gadgets that are used several times before they are relegated to the back of a cupboard never to be seen again. It was with this thought in mind that had delayed me in purchasing a smoothie maker but when our blender broke recently I wanted to replace that and decided to take the plunge by getting a unit i could use as a blender but also as a smoothie maker. I also wanted to provide the family with tasty, ... ...the different models available but I picked this up for £34.99 on a spur of the moment.
>>>> Packaging and Contents: <<<<
The smoothie maker is well protected in a clear bag with polystyrene at the bottom and the top. All this in turn is then in a standard cardboard box with pictures of the smoothie maker. I didn't feel that the packaging was excessive and of course the box can be recycled.
As well as the smoothie maker, you get the instruction ...
sjp1966 27.10.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Kenwood SB 256 Smoothie Concert
Advantages: Easy to use and clean Disadvantages: A bit noisy
It is a well-known fact in my house that my other half is a gadget magnet; whenever a new gadget comes out he is the first to buy them. The problem with this is he also thinks that I like all these gadgets for the kitchen and he marvels how they will save me time, like the bread maker I mean it takes me 5 minutes to pop to the shop and buy a loaf of bread and about 2 hours to make one! That's just an example but you can see what I mean. But for once ... ...for Christmas, I decided not to ask the other half as I just wanted a plain smoothie maker and not one that looks like it has bean beamed down from space and takes me 6 months to read the instruction manual! The reason I actually wanted one is simple really I don't eat enough fruit, to be honest I don't eat any and it is also getting harder to get my eldest boy to eat fruit also, so I decided to try making smoothies to see if I could at least make ...
lisa8871 03.02.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Kenwood SB 256 Smoothie Concert
Advantages: Powerful. Fast. Easy to use and clean. Disadvantages: Noisy motor. ? Durability.
...which you would want. The Kenwood Concert definitely comes into the second category.
-- How to use it --
It comes with step-by-step instructions to assemble it (which is really quite an easy process, only taking a few minutes). Once ready, you simply plug it in, insert the ingredients (liquids at the bottom) and press a button. The concert responds with a reassuringly deafening roar and the fruit is pulped. You then press a second button (I'm not ... ...around a minute.
-- How do you get the drink out? --
Then there is an ingenious tap arrangement which you use to simply pour the drink into a glass. This works in a similar fashion to those plastic taps you find on a box of wine and screws off for easy cleaning.
--Any extras?--
The smoothie maker comes complete with an obligatory recipe book, which contains dozens of recipes containing alcoholic and non-alcoholic smoothies.
It is probably a ...
drewish 14.02.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Kenwood SB 256 Smoothie Concert
Advantages: easy to use and clean,effective at mixing most items Disadvantages: very loud when in use
...the time.It's very easy to use and clean and the results are excellent.You even get a recipe book but i find making your own mixtures and combinations to be the best part of this product.So make the most of the warmer weather and give the kenwood smoothie maker a whirl. ...
JACKAROONEY 29.06.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Kenwood SB 256 Smoothie Concert
Advantages: Get your 5 a day in a glass Disadvantages: Chopping up fruit
The Original Kenwood ‘New York’ Smoothie Machine!
Manufactures comments:
1.5 ltr Smoothie maker
2 way rotation
Colour: Chrome
Dimensions (H x W x D) in mm: 380 x 215 x 200
Weight (Kg): 3
Speed Settings: 3
The smoothie is specially designed to mix and serve refreshing smoothies. It has a 1.5 litre capacity. The acrylic funnel shaped goblet is graduated with markings for 2 & 4 servings. It has a powerful motor which can blend ice, frozen fruit ... ...making fresh fruit cocktails, the Kenwood SB206 Smoothie Maker is a must. This is the first New York style Smoothie Maker to be launched in the UK and is the perfect way to help start your day. Blend your choice of fruits for 20 - 60 seconds and you'll have a refreshing smoothie drink to perk you up and stave off hunger until lunchtime. By night, experience fresh-tasting, natural fruit smoothie cocktails: invite your friends along for rum and banana ...
Helenofellon 30.06.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Kenwood SB 256 Smoothie Concert
