Review of Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender

I could quickly sum up this review of the Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender by describing it in one word:  Fantastic!  But I will say a bit more about it since I love it so much!

I received this stick blender from the CSN stores in order to do a review of one of their products – thank you very much CSN!  Like I mentioned in my previous review of my Cuisinart Quick Prep Stick Blender, I wasn’t too happy with it’s performance.

A few things that I don’t like about the Quick Prep blender are:

• It never really got the soup or smoothie really smooth and bits of food would get stuck in the plastic surrounding the blade.
• It was a pain to clean because the blade doesn’t detach from the motor.
• Plastic instead of stainless steel.

However, my new Smart Stick blender – the one pictured above – really performs so much better than it’s little brother.

The number one great thing about the Smart Stick Blender compared to the Quick Prep Blender is that it actually gets the food smooth!  Plus, food doesn’t get stuck in the holds on the side of blender like the Quick Prep.  When I make smoothies with it, it blends up the fruit quickly and very smoothly – so yummy!  My smoothies made with the Quick Prep were always a bit lumpy.   Because of this, my son was never very fond of them – go figure!  But yesterday I made a smoothie with the Smart Stick and he said, “I do really love this smoothie, mom!”

Beyond smoothies:  The other thing I have used the Smart Stick blender for was making lentil pate for a personal chef client of mine.  And the amazing thing is I used the stick blender to do this and it blended everything up beautifully with barely any liquid at all.

The other wonderful thing about the Smart Stick is that the blade component detaches from the motor and cord so that you can clean it very easily under running water.  The Quick Prep blender was always a pain to clean because I could never get the entire blender low enough in the sink in order to easily clean the blade.  Plus, I never wanted to get water close to the motor and cord.

It gets better.  The Smart Stick Blender comes with some nifty attachments – a chopper and a whisk.  Now these are awesome to me because my Cuisinart Food Processor, while a wonderful piece of equipment, is very heavy and large.  I love that I can use the small chopping attachment on the Smart Stick Blender to chop up small portions of nuts or ginger.  Plus because it’s so much smaller, it’s much easier to clean as well.

As for the whisk attachment, I haven’t had a chance or opportunity to use this yet.  The thing I would use it for would most likely to whip egg whites instead of using the mixer – which is also quite large.  But since I haven’t been eating eggs, I just haven’t tried it yet.  But I am assuming that because the motor is 200 watts of power, it would do fine job at whisking some egg whites.

If you have never tried using a stick blender, you might consider adding this piece of equipment to your kitchen.  The main thing I love using it for is blending up soups because you can blend them directly in the pot of soup instead of transferring them to a blender.  It really is very versatile, very light and very easy to clean.

Plus this particular model is on sale at CSN for around $50.  I bought the Quick Prep for $30 but if I had known was a huge difference there was in performance, I would have originally purchased the Smart Stick.  It’s simply so much “smarter” and the Quick Prep simply doesn’t compare.

I might add that I’m not getting “paid” to write this review, other than the fact that CSN gave me the stick blender.  So if you purchase a Smart Stick from CSN or any other store, I do not make a commission.   But what I do care about is sharing about something that makes my life a lot easier in the kitchen!

Happy cooking!