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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Gadgets: HUROM Premium Slow Juicer/Smoothie Maker

This product probably wins an award for the longest name ever: the HUROM Premium Slow Juicer/Smoothie Maker ($399.95).

I reviewed a slow-speed juicer a year ago, and the juicing function on this one is similar. Rather than rapidly shredding the fruits and vegetables, this crushes them. It's a lot quieter than a high-speed juicer, and easier to clean because it doesn't have the sharp shredding teeth.

The difference between this and the previous juicer is that this one has a few extra features: a juice cap and a pulp control lever. The pulp control lever lets the user control how much pulp is ejected from the juicer, which controls how much of that pulp ends up in the juice. It's a nice feature, and since you can adjust it as the machine runs, in theory you could make a mixed juice with more mango pulp but less berry pulp, if that's what you're after.

The juice cap keeps the juice in the juicer until the cap is opened. At first, it seemed like an odd feature. Why would you want to keep the juice inside the juicer? But then I tried a version of one of the smoothie recipes that included a banana and some almond milk and some berries.

With the juice cap closed, the fruit blended nicely and I ended up with a smoothie much like one I'd get from a blender. Well, that was interesting.

After trying a few juicers over the past few years, I have to say that I prefer the slow-speed models over the high-speed, and this is a fine example of a slow-speed juicer.

Although I was skeptical about using this for making smoothies it worked better than I expected, and I liked the pulp control lever as well. Whether those features are enough to get rid of my current juicer and buy this - well, probably not. But if I didn't have a juicer and I was shopping for a new one, the added features in this model would certainly move it up the list.

The product was supplied for the purpose of a review on Serious Eats; this was previously published on Serious Eats.