Blenders & Juicers
Buy and sell blenders and juicers in Panama.
Passion fruit is where most Panamanian kitchens learn that these machines are not interchangeable: run the blender too long and the black seeds shatter and turn the juice bitter, so it gets a few short pulses and then the strainer. Oranges and limes belong on a citrus press, peeled pineapple and carrot go through a juicer, and soursop, which gives almost no juice at all, is a blender job with water and a sieve. All of these machines turn up new in the box and second-hand, and a fair share of the used juicers were bought for green juice and drifted to the back of a cupboard.
Jar, personal and immersion blenders:
the jar blender on the counter does most of the work, and the first choice is the jar itself. Glass is heavy and stays clear for years; plastic and Tritan jars are lighter and survive a drop, but ice clouds and scratches them. Personal blenders such as the Nutribullet blend straight into a cup that takes a lid and goes out the door, right for one person’s morning smoothie, short for a family jug. High-speed machines from Vitamix and Ninja turn greens, oats and nuts smooth where an ordinary blender leaves them gritty. An immersion blender is a wand you take to the pot, the easy way to purée a soup without pouring it hot into a jar, whether it simmered on the stove or in a slow cooker from cookers. Frappés and iced coffee start in a jar blender with ice; the coffee itself comes from a machine in tea and coffee makers.
Centrifugal juicers, slow juicers and the citrus press:
a centrifugal juicer shreds fruit against a spinning mesh basket and throws the juice out in seconds. It is fast, loud and foamy, and it handles hard produce such as carrot and peeled pineapple well. A slow juicer, often sold as a cold press, crushes produce with a turning auger against a screen. It is quieter, gets far more out of leafy greens and ginger and is slower to clean; fibrous pieces such as pineapple core and celery need cutting short or they wind round the auger. For oranges and limes neither beats a citrus press, either an electric cone that turns both ways or a hand reamer that costs next to nothing.
The price gap between spinning and pressing juicers:
a centrifugal juicer from Oster or Black+Decker runs around $45 to $95 new, and a slow juicer starts around $150. New centrifugal models cost so little that a secondhand one needs an unworn basket and a price to match before it beats a sealed box. A used slow juicer is the better hunt: many were run for a few weeks and put away, and the two parts that decide its value, the auger and the screen, can be checked by eye in a minute.
Cracked screens, torn baskets and burnt-smelling motors:
hold a slow juicer’s screen up to the light first. Hairline cracks around its base or in the auger mean it will split under load, and those are the parts you are paying for. Run it with water and a carrot and try the reverse button, which is how a jam gets cleared. A centrifugal juicer that walks across the counter has a worn or unbalanced basket; check the mesh for tears and that the locking arm clicks home, since the motor will not start without it. A blender tells on itself by smell: run it hard with ice and water for a little while, and a hot, electrical smell from the base means a motor that has been worked too hard. Check a glass jar for cracks near the base and the handle, and a personal blender’s cups for split threads.
Cleaning the pulp out before a juicer or blender goes up for sale:
dried pulp packed into a screen makes a juicer look neglected even when it runs perfectly, so soak and brush it before the photos. Say whether it is a centrifugal or a slow juicer, or what the jar is made of and how much it holds, and lay out every cup, lid, tamper, pusher and brush it came with. Photograph the screen against the light and the label under the base; a short clip of it running with water settles whether the motor works before anyone travels to see it. Someone coming in from La Chorrera for a slow juicer will want to know that every screen it shipped with is in the box, because one missing its fine screen cannot make the pulp-free juice it was sold for.