Sage by Heston Blumenthal the Boss To Go review: The boss of blending

The Boss to Go is the most expensive smoothie maker I’ve seen, but its design goes a long way to justifying its high price. Its brushed metal base and discrete branding make it a stunning smoothie maker. It’s a good job it looks good, as it’s also the heaviest model I’ve tested, so you won’t want to hide it away and have to lift it out of a cupboard every morning.

What’s in the box?

Open it up and you’ll find the powerful 1,000W motor assembly, and two 800ml bottles with sipping caps and more compact storage caps for when you want to store your smoothie in the fridge for a while. There’s an instruction book and, which is a bit of a treat, a slickly produced full-colour recipe book, complete with detailed descriptions of why smoothies are the key to a long and healthy life.

The feeling of quality extends to the blending cups. They’re made of thick plastic and feel tough, and are roughly pint-glass shaped; this means they don’t look as stylish as the slim bottles shipped with blenders such as the Salter Blender to Go and Breville Blend Active Personal, but the cups’ wide bodies make it easier to fit in your ingredients and make the cups easier to wash up. You can also wash the cups, lids and blade assembly in the dishwasher.

Ease of use

The sipping lids fit with a pleasing bayonet action, and have a plastic loop – presumably so you can hang the cup from your rucksack or pram handle. The reassuringly heavy blade assembly fits into the bottom of the blending cups with the same bayonet action – it’s all very easy and satisfying to use.

Once you’ve added your ingredients, to start blending you just need to place the cup and blade assembly on the base and twist a few degrees anti-clockwise. There is a claimed ‘pulse’ function, but this just involves rotating the cup back and forth to engage and disengage the motor.

Blending performance

The manual warns that you shouldn’t blend for more than 10 seconds at a time, which made me wonder whether I’d have to blend my smoothies in stages. I needn’t have worried. The Boss to Go made short work of my first recipe, which consisted of half a cup of kale, half a cup of mixed berries and a sliced banana, topped up to the cups’ maximum fill line with water. The blades got the tricky kale leaves down to a nice small size, making for a pleasant smoothie with no large leaves to stick to your teeth. Despite its powerful 1,000W motor the smoothie maker isn’t too noisy, either.

I was equally impressed with my sweet smoothie. This consisted of an apple cut into eight pieces with the skin left on, an orange cut into eight segments, a sliced banana and four ice cubes, topped up to the cup’s maximum fill line with orange juice. After a 10-second blend I was left with a beautiful smoothie.

It’s important to leave the skin on the apple to make sure you’re getting all the health benefits, but this can trip up some smoothie makers, leaving an unpleasant bitty texture. Not so the Boss to Go. It dealt well with all the fruit, leaving a smoothie that was just bitty enough for my taste.

Verdict

The Boss to Go may be expensive, but it looks good, feels well made and produces the best smoothies I’ve seen. If you want the best possible blended fruit and veg drinks, this is the machine to buy.