Smeg Blender BLF01 review

With their cool, pastel colours and curved, rounded frames, each one of Smeg’s small home appliances looks ls though it’s been time-warped straight out of the 1950s. Its BLF01 Blender is no exception, but this large, powerful device is anything but old-fashioned. With its 800W motor, large 1.5l jug and several different speeds and pre-set modes, the BLF01 is well-equipped to deal with almost any type of sauce, soup, dressing or smoothie you want blended or emulsified. It’s not suitable for blending hot food, but that’s more or less its only limitation, as it can blend dry ingredients without the need for extra water using its short pulse mode, and can crush ice as well with its special pre-set.

It’s a rather imposing device when you first get it out of the box, as its large, heavy base measures 197x163mm and weighs just over 3.5kg. Combined with its 1.5l jug, the whole blender stands at 397mm tall, which should fit easily in the gap between your worktop and your cabinets.

With a metre-long power cable, it’s relatively flexible, and it has a handy cord wrap built into the base, so it should also be easy to stow away and keep tidy if you’d rather keep it in a cupboard. This might be preferable if you find Smeg’s glossy, metallic branding a little too garish round the sides of the blender, but at least its central control dial help draws your attention away from it if you keep it tucked in between other appliances.

The BLF01 doesn’t come with many accessories, but its large capacity jug can hold a lot more ingredients than single-serving blenders such as the Nutribullet or Nutri Ninja. There’s also a removable lid and small measuring cup that fits into the centre of the lid, although with absolutely no kind of markings on it, it’s not really useful to measure things with. Instead, you’re more likely to be using it for feeding additional ingredients into the blender while its blades are spinning away.

It’s very easy to operate. The jug locks in on top of the motor and doesn’t require you to hold it down while it’s blending, and a red LED light will appear on the dial to indicate when it’s plugged in and receiving power. Its anti-slip feet stay firmly in place while you’re operating the blender and its safety lock mechanism will automatically shut the blender down if it overheats or you remove the jug.^ The BLF01 is controlled with its central dial, which has four different speed settings and two pre-set modes. The pulse button sits above it

Once your ingredients are in place, all you need to do then is simply select your chosen speed setting, which ranges from 1 to 4, and press the large start/stop button on the side of the dial. The dial also has two pre-set modes for smoothies and crushing ice, and these have their own timed programmes which will stop automatically, lasting for around 60 and 50 seconds respectively.

Smeg recommends using speeds 1-2 for recipes such as mousses, sorbets, batters, salad dressings and blended frozen drinks, and increasing the speed up to 3 or 4 for soups, whipped cream, milkshakes, smoothies, pesto and purées. The motor gets progressively louder as you move up through each setting, but the’re all pretty noisy, so don’t expect to carry on a conversation while you’re using it. The pulse button, meanwhile, can be used to briefly whizz up the motor to top speed for a couple of seconds, but cannot be used on speed setting 4 or with the two pre-set modes.

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