Thank you.
Hi, my name is Ed. This is my wife Dawn and we're here today to show you how to use your new Vitamix.
I'm sure you're just as excited to start using your machine as we were when we first got ours.
Dawn and I have been demonstrating kitchen appliances for over 20 years and we have never found any machine that compares to the Vitamix.
It's the most powerful machine on the market. It's the most versatile, it's easy to operate and very easy to clean.
That's right, Ed. Plus, it's the best machine to help you eat better.
I'm sure many of you purchased the Vitamix with a healthier diet in mind, as well as some great tasting recipes.
Nutritionists tell us that if we consume a diet that is high in fiber, low in fat, with at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day,
we can dramatically lower our risk of heart disease, cancer and stroke.
Those are three great reasons to use your Vitamix every day.
Before we get started, I'd like to take just a moment to go over what came in your package.
For those of you that purchased the basic package, you received the Vitamix machine itself.
That includes the powerful motor base, the container with the blades, the two-piece lid, the tamper, the video and two cookbooks.
For those of you that purchased the super, you got all of this, plus you received a second container.
This container has an especially designed blade for grinding grains and kneading bread dough, as well as a whole grains cookbook.
I just want you to know that it doesn't take hours of practice to be proficient with your Vitamix.
All you have to do is follow our step-by-step instructions that are pictured in your Getting Started cookbook.
You'll be off to a good start.
You'll also find hundreds of recipes in our Whole Foods cookbook.
They're all analyzed for nutritional value.
Let's start with the motor base.
If you'll turn your machine over, you'll notice that the cord is wound around the bottom.
Our engineers have thought of everything.
All you need to do is unwind the amount of cord that you need to plug the machine in.
Plug it in, and you're ready to operate.
On the front of your machine, you'll notice that there are two switches.
The switch on the right turns the machine on and off.
The switch on the left controls the speeds.
The variable setting allows you to control your processing speed with the dial in the center,
which is numbered from 1 to 10, 1 being the slowest.
For the more difficult jobs, turn the speed switch to high, which overrides the variable dial.
The container fits squarely on the motor base, and the blade does come out of the container.
If you'd ever like to do so, refer to the instructions in your cookbook.
However, it is not necessary to take the blades out for everyday cleaning.
You'll notice the container is calibrated on both sides with measurements.
On one side, it's liters and milliliters.
The other side, cups and ounces.
It's a two-liter container, which makes it just a little over half a gallon.
But it's been designed, remember, to do very small amounts.
You can do as little as a half a cup, or all the way up to the full half gallon.
The ridges on the container aren't just there for decoration.
These are patented, and they help to circulate the food properly.
Now, remember, you have a two-horsepower motor, so we certainly designed the lid to fit securely.
In fact, I would recommend that you use a little bit of vegetable oil to season your lid.
The lid has a continuous rim, and to put the lid on, place that rim underneath your container tab.
There's one on either side of the container.
Press down on the opposite side, and it'll lock into place.
To remove the lid, put your hands around the lid, press in by the arrow at the container tab.
The lid lifts off easily.
Now, if you happen to have small hands, you may want to use a spoon.
Use the handle of the spoon, insert it by the porous spout.
This will allow you to remove the lid easily.
There are two other pieces of the lid that I'd like to point out.
On the top is what we call the plug.
It comes out so that you can add liquids or other ingredients into the machine while it is processing.
We also have what we call a tamper.
You'll notice on the top of the tamper there is a ring, and the ring is larger than the hole in the lid,
so that will stop it before touching the blades.
It's very safe to use the tamper while the machine is processing.
Use this to stir while the machine is running, to push foods down into the blades,
or just leave it sit, and foods will actually circulate on the tamper itself.
Remember, don't ever use any other utensil in the container while the machine is running,
because not only could you damage the utensil, but you could certainly damage your machine as well.
And always operate your machine with the lid in place.
You can imagine with a two-horsepower motor, that could get a little messy without the lid.
Dawn and I like to start every day making juice.
It's quick and it's easy, it's delicious, and you're in and out of the kitchen fast.
We're going to be doing a recipe called or boppy juice.
If you'd like to follow along, it's found in your Getting Started Cookbook.
We're going to triple the recipe.
Start off by asking Ed, would you peel an orange for me?
Sure.
We chose this recipe to show you that it follows the Vitamix philosophy
that the whole food is better for you than just one part of it.
You'll notice though, even though Ed is peeling the orange,
he's leaving on as much of the white as possible,
because there's good things found in the white, lots of vitamin C.
And I like the fact that I don't have to cut the orange into little pieces first.
You can add in the whole fruit.
What else goes in the recipe, Dawn?
Well, we're going to use a piece of an apple and some banana.
On the apple, I'm going to use the whole thing.
It's going to go in with the core, the seeds, the peel.
We're supposed to eat more fiber in our diet.
This is high in fiber.
Now you notice that Dawn did peel the banana though.
A banana peel would taste bitter like an orange peel,
so that's why we did peel that.
The recipe also calls for some pineapple.
You'll notice that we use the core.
It may be too hard to chew with your teeth, but it's not too hard for the Vitamix.
And there's plenty of fiber and nutrition in that core.
I sweeten the juice with honey.
Now, sweetening your juices is always an option,
but I find that people like a sweeter juice.
You can use raisins or dates or extra ripe banana.
The honey is real easy.
Kids especially like it, I think, with the honey in there too.
I'm going to chill the drink by adding in ice.
And the ice is good for two reasons.
I think the drink does taste better cold,
but if you look at the type of fruit that I used,
particularly the apple and the banana, they're a little bit pulpy.
We put in the ice to thin the juice out.
Put your lid on.
Use your tamper.
We'll turn the machine on high speed.
Now, we like to do our juices for at least a minute and a half.
That way they're very, very smooth.
Sometimes we let them run even longer.
I think the juice is done, Don.
Great.
Would you like a taste?
I'd love some.
Okay.
You remember what all went into the juice.
We put in the core of the pineapple, the skin of the apple,
the seeds of the citrus, and look how smooth it is.
If you'd like to make this even thinner,
remember you can add in grapes, melons,
any fruit that has a lot of liquid.
But it's good right to the last drop.
How about some more?
You like that?
I love it.
Many people ask me, will the Vitamix make carrot juice?
Yes, the Vitamix will make great carrot juice.
But remember, it's not a juice extractor.
When you're making juice with the Vitamix,
carrot juice, for example, we would use 100% of the carrot,
100% of the juice, and 100% of the pulp.
After all, nutritionists tell us a lot of the nutrition is in the pulp.
Just remember, though, a carrot by itself in here,
if I turn it on now, it would turn out more of a pureed texture
or a baby food consistency.
So we'll want to thin our juice with a little bit of water.
And on this, I would recommend an equal portion of carrot to water.
So a half a cup of water, a half a cup of carrots,
and that would make a nice juice.
It would be a little bit bland tasting for kids.
So to enhance the flavor for kids,
I would recommend that you add in a little apple juice concentrate,
two ounces.
I'll add in a quarter of an apple, which adds fiber.
We all know that we should be eating more fiber in our diet.
And I do prefer the drinks cold.
So our juice is going to have a few ice cubes.
Turn the machine on high, let it run for one minute.
...
Now, as you can see, that small amount of produce
makes quite a bit of juice.
Don't limit yourself to just carrots.
You can use any other fruit or vegetable in here as well.
So you can use celery or bell peppers.
Well, that looks so good, though, I think I've got to taste it.
That's delicious.
It's easy to make ice cream using your Vitamix.
And the beauty of it, you won't be spending 45 minutes
like you do with a traditional ice cream maker.
Now, whatever type of ice cream you make,
whether it's traditional ice cream, sorbets, frozen yogurt,
they all start with a liquid base.
I'm going to use tangerine juice today.
And this is a tangerine juice concentrate.
You don't have to use tangerine.
You can use any fruit juice concentrate.
I'll add in half a can.
This recipe is dairy-free, so I'll add in half a banana,
which gives the ice cream, or sorbet in this case,
a creamier texture.
Now, for food coloring, I'm going to add in carrots.
That's about the best coloring that I can think of.
And if your kids won't eat the way they should,
this is a good way to get some extra nutrition in their diet.
I'll sweeten this with honey.
You could use honey, you can use sugar or NutriSweet,
whatever you prefer.
And I'll add in ice.
Any size ice cubes will work.
Put the lid on, use the tamper.
This we process on high speed.
And that's how easy it is to make ice cream using the Vitamix,
frozen solid in the container.
Didn't take 45 minutes.
The Vitamix is a great food processor.
Ed and I use ours quite a bit for chopping and dicing.
To process food in the Vitamix, you'll use your variable speed switch.
This allows you to control the dial on the center.
It's numbered from 1 to 10.
1 is your slowest speed.
That's for your soft foods.
Increase the speed for your harder foods.
And there are actually two different methods for doing the chopping and dicing.
You can either put the foods in before you begin chopping,
or you can drop them in after the machine is already running.
And we're going to show you both.
Onions are soft, so I'll do this on speed number 1.
This is a great way to chop your onions.
It's much better than using a knife.
How's that for chopping onions with no more tears?
That's great.
Now I'll also show you how to do some carrots.
We use carrots a lot for our
carrot cake, carrot raisin salad.
And we'll do this the same method that we did the onions,
putting them in before we turn it on.
Carrots are a harder vegetable, so I'll increase the speed for this.
Don't forget you can turn the dial while the machine is processing
to get just the texture that you want.
Now to do the chopping of the meat,
you can either drop it in while it's running,
or we prefer once again to put it in first.
We'll do this at the same speed that we chopped the carrots.
You know, I need to point out, Ed, that you should always have your tamper handy
in case you need to stir while you're doing your processing.
This would be particularly true with your leafier vegetables, like cabbage.
So we have ground meat for chili or hamburgers.
I do turkey in there for turkey burgers or turkey chili.
This time we'll show you how to chop while you're actually dropping the food in
and it's running.
How about cheese over pizza or salad?
Turn the machine on.
You'll even do your hard cheeses like Parmesan and Romano.
Just remember to increase the speed the harder the cheese is.
That sure saves time in the kitchen.
It does.
Just a few minutes ago you saw Ed make ice cream,
so you know how the Vitamix freezes.
There's another process I'd like to show you.
It's cooking.
Even though there's no heating element, you're probably wondering, how does it cook?
Well, it's very simple. It's friction heat.
It's just like when you rub your hands together and your hands get hot from the friction.
That blade is going so fast that as it goes by the food, it creates a little bit of heat.
And the longer you let it run, the hotter it gets.
You can take cold water all the way up to boiling in a matter of minutes.
Now my recipe starts off with water as the first ingredient.
Instead of using cold water though, I like to save time in the kitchen.
So what I'm going to do is start off with hot water.
Then just start adding your vegetables in.
A fresh carrot, a little bit of celery.
You'll notice I use rather small pieces of most vegetables.
Traditionally when you make soup, you simmer the vegetables for hours,
trying to get the flavor to go into the broth.
Well here, we'll be making our broth in just minutes.
We don't lose any flavor.
So a little bit of fresh goes a long way,
especially when you're doing something like onion or garlic.
I know that garlic has strong antibiotic properties and antioxidant properties,
but you use too much, it's antisocial.
So remember, just a little bit of garlic goes a long way.
To make the base thicker and creamier, use anything that's starchy.
A little leftover baked potato is good.
Everybody likes the taste of that, leftover pasta or rice.
And then all you have to do is season it.
My advice is just keep it simple.
I like to use a little bit of seasoned salt and a little bit of seasoned pepper.
You can use whatever you're used to using, just whatever you have around the house.
I like a little bit of Italian herb seasoning too.
And bouillon.
And we're ready to go.
When you start off with hot liquids,
the thing that's important to remember is to start with the lowest speed
and then increase the speed to high.
We call that walking it up.
So put it down to low, turn it on.
Now you remember what it looked like before.
Look at the difference now.
See all that steam coming out of there?
The Vitamix made it hot.
Now I prefer a chunky style soup.
Something with a little bit of texture.
So what I'm going to do, I add in a little bit of cooked brown rice.
You can add in any leftovers at this point.
A little leftover pasta, a little leftover rice, some vegetables or meat.
This time I'll turn it down to the low speed.
And just like I did the chopping earlier in the video,
we're going to just chop the vegetables in here.
And that way you have a chunky style soup.
The best part about making soup this way is that you can come home from work
or run an errands, whatever it is that keeps you busy.
You've got a hearty healthy meal for yourself and your family
in less than five minutes' time.
These vegetables have never been cooked,
so they still have the nutrition of the fresh vegetables.
And you can't get that out of a can.
Just think of a smoothie like a milkshake.
You can make it creamy and smooth and rich and sweet and cold,
but you use all natural ingredients.
And the recipe I've got for you tastes fantastic.
It starts off with two cups of frozen strawberries.
I'm going to put in about five ounces of unsweetened pineapple juice,
a tablespoon of coconut juice,
and just a pinch of vanilla extract.
About five ounces of tofu.
You know, tofu is an excellent source of protein.
It's also a great source of natural estrogen,
which is good for both men and women.
The honey, as always, is optional.
So go ahead, use as much or as little as you'd like.
And that's all there is to it.
I'll run it on high speed for just 30 seconds,
and then we'll have a taste.
It's quick and it's simple.
It makes a great after-school snack for the kids.
I can't wait to try it.
Mmm.
It really does taste like a milkshake.
It's easy to make bread using your Vitamix.
You'll need to use the optional DryBlade container.
If you didn't purchase this attachment,
you'll need to do so before you can grind grain and knead dough.
The container is clearly marked.
Now in my demonstration, I'll leave the lid off at times
for demonstration purposes.
At home, always use the lid.
The first ingredient calls for 1 3-quarters cups whole grain wheat.
Now I'll grind this on high speed.
Remember, you can grind other grains.
You can grind soy, you can grind corn, oats,
grind coffee or beans for soup.
We'll grind on high speed for 90 seconds.
Crack grains use the lower speeds.
Our next ingredient is 1 1-third cups of water.
Now I'm not going to put in all the water at once.
I'll put in part of it now.
I'll add in the rest later.
Our next ingredient, 1 tablespoon yeast,
1 teaspoon of salt, and honey to sweeten.
Now I'll use the lid and I'll tap the switch on and off
five or six times to get the dry ingredients
and the wet ingredients mixed.
Use a rubber spatula, and I find if you put a little water
on the spatula, it'll help your spatula from sticking to the dough.
You want to push the flour down toward the blade.
Tap it on and off.
Now this is already starting to knead the dough.
Push the dough down into the blades again and tap it.
You repeat this particular step seven or eight times.
That'll fully develop the gluten.
You can see how that's already starting to form into a ball.
You can't over-knead the dough.
The more you knead the dough, the lighter your loaf of bread.
And we'll do that one last time.
Now this time when it went up into the ball,
I saved that little bit of water to add in at the end.
I'll coat the dough.
That'll make it easier to get it out of the container.
Now this time when I spin this, I'll be able to turn the container
upside down and the dough will fall out.
Now you'll have a little bit of dough left in the bottom of the container.
That's easy to get out.
Use your spatula to remove the rest of the dough.
Just shape the dough into a loaf.
Let it rise 20 to 30 minutes.
Bake it in the oven for 45 minutes at 350.
And there you have it, fresh bread dough from whole grains
ready to rise in less than five minutes.
All kids love peanut butter and the Vitamix makes great peanut butter.
In fact, I think it's one of the easiest recipes in the book.
You just use four cups of your favorite type of nuts.
No liquid is needed unless you're using raw nuts.
Then you may want to use a little bit of oil.
Snap the lid in place.
You'll use your tamper and high speed.
Now the tamper is used to feed the nuts down to the blade.
I'll turn this on high speed.
Doesn't that look delicious?
Dawn and I love to entertain using our Vitamix.
And the next few recipes are guaranteed to be a hit at any party.
Dawn will start out making fresh salsa,
we'll make a pina colada, and a delicious frozen cappuccino.
The recipe I'm making for salsa is called California Salsa,
and it's a good one.
It starts off with four or five roma tomatoes.
These tomatoes are firmer tomato, so they make a better chunky salsa.
We'll use some onion, a small handful of fresh cilantro,
and one serrano chili.
You can use more if you want it hotter.
A pinch of salt, and a squeeze of fresh lemon.
And that's all there is to it.
It's very simple.
We're going to do this on the low speed.
And it's important to make salsa on the low speed,
because if you forget and do it on high speed,
you end up with a real spicy V8.
You'll also notice Ed will be using the tamper
to actually push the tomatoes down into the blade.
It certainly doesn't take long.
I have a tip for you on how to get the salsa out of the container.
Just take the nut on the back of the container and wiggle it,
and your salsa will pour right out.
How long would it take you to do that with a kitchen knife?
You know what I love with salsa are pina coladas,
and Vitamix makes the creamiest pina colada you've ever had.
We'll start with half a can of pina colada mix,
unsweetened pineapple juice,
of course a nice big chunk of fresh pineapple.
That looks good.
I'll use ice to chill it.
Rum is optional.
Process on high speed for 30 seconds.
Now that is smooth.
Boy, does that look good.
To me, there's nothing more refreshing than a frozen cappuccino,
and you can make these in seconds in your Vitamix.
You can start off with whole coffee beans,
freshly brewed coffee, or instant coffee like I'm using today.
For the milk, you can use nonfat milk if you're a light eater.
I like to use the half and half.
Then with chocolate, the recipe calls for one tablespoon of chocolate.
In our house, there's no such thing as you can see as too much chocolate.
That's right.
Just a splash of vanilla extract,
and sweeten it with as little or as much honey as you'd like.
To chill it, we're going to put in some ice.
It's very simple.
Just run it for about 30 seconds on high speed.
It's cool and it's refreshing.
It makes a great dessert.
In fact, if you're having company come over
and you'd like to serve this for dessert,
then put a little dollop of whipped cream on here.
That makes it really tasty.
And a tiny sprinkle of chocolate.
Don and I would like to thank you for watching our instructional video today.
I think you can now see clearly why we say
it's the most versatile kitchen appliance on the market today.
Whether you're trying to lose weight or just help your family eat better,
Vitamix makes it quick and easy.
I hope you learned a few good techniques today.
Remember, there are hundreds of recipes in your book.
But remember, you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your family
and to Vitamix every day, to your good health.
Thank you.