[Photo: Rosica PR]

Thank the raw foods movement for the sudden popularity of high-powered blenders. These oversized macho machines that claim to replace half of your tools feature motors with upwards of two horsepower. That's four or five times more powerful than a standard home blender.

Even Montel Williams, ubiquitous talk-show-host-turned-MS-advocate, has jumped on the bandwagon with a model of his own, the HealthMaster, whose Elite version claims to replace up to 30 kitchen tools (your 10-inch chef's knife included!) A good blender is a useful tool for healthy eating, encouraging the use of fresh produce and making vegetables more versatile. But does the HealthMaster's performance justify it's $200 price tag?

Tech Specs

I'm happy to say that it passes the basic blender exam with flying colors, producing everything from a chunky puree to silky smooth soups. With the help of the included tamper, ice in particular crushes with great ease, yielding perfect margaritas and smoothies each time. It can handle more than a standard blender in terms of volume and whole chunks, oftentimes with no chopping or prep work required. To give you an idea of how powerful it is, let me say this: Granulated sugar becomes powdered sugar almost instantly.

But it's quite loud, getting the kitchen shaking even at the slowest of its eight speeds—this is important to know, because the more energy a blender wastes through vibration, the less energy is actually being put into processing your food. At 1.46 input horsepower, it's one of the weaker in the souped-up blender category (the $500 VitaMix, for instance goes well over two horsepower, and is significantly quieter).

It's also very large—to the extent that it doesn't fit on my countertop or in my cabinets. The roomy 70-ounce BPA-free plastic pitcher is fitted with a double blade, and thankfully it's dishwasher safe, since its awkward grooves make it hard to clean.

So it beats a normal blender at all the standard blending tasks, but what can it do that a top-tier standard blender can't? Montel would say quite a bit: he includes 300 recipes with the product to prove his point. That those recipes taste rather strange across the board is irrelevant—the point is that with a stronger blender, you should be able to make dough, nut butters, desserts, fondues, and all sorts of creations not typically whipped up in a pitcher.

The Tests

My first adventure—pizza dough—was fairly successful. The dough came together rather nicely, only stalling the blender once in the process (it features an automatic shut-off to prevent the motor from burning out), and the sauce—a red pepper pesto—was a breeze. Ice cream didn't fare as well. It's made by freezing milk in an ice cube tray, blending it together with the other ingredients, then refreezing the resultant slush. Despite the recipe's claims, friction heated the base as it spun, melting it too far. After refreezing, I wound up with a nasty block of frozen mess.

If the HealthMaster could make all the recipes enclosed in the box, I'd be convinced of its place in my kitchen, but two entire sections of the recipe book are in direct contradiction with the user manual, which says the blender should not be used for doughs. Even loose batters like banana bread triggered the shut-off every couple of seconds. Looks like some extra horsepower might have been a good thing after all.

Some recipes in the booklet rely on the heat created by friction in the unit to heat soups or fondues, but all of my attempts came out lukewarm. A built-in heating function would be appreciated, and would certainly validate the steam vent so cleverly included in the lid's design (it's still quite useful if you plan on pureeing hot foods off of your stovetop).

More than anything, the HealthMaster is a product worth under-selling, not over-hyping, as Montel has been quick to do. Will it replace those 30 kitchen tools, or even half as many? Not a chance in the world. But it's a good, relatively low-priced option within its category, fulfilling the functions that you'd expect from a high-power blender.