Tefal BL962B40 Ultrablend Cook High Speed Blender, 1300 W

Very powerful blades and amazing boiling tech, the jug is easy to clean as all you need to do is hold down the button to make the blades whirl all the water cleaning it instantly. It can handle anything! Nuts and even the finest seaman seed gets crushed into fine dust like bits. Lets all the flavours come out of the fruit!

I bought this 5 weeks ago, hurt my back carrying the jug with soup in on my first use and haven’t used it since! If you have a bad back or can’t carry heavy things don’t do it.

The blender was great for a month but then the jug started to leak. Almost a month later and I am still waiting for a replacement jug, just to update, I now have a replacement blender, working fine just now and am glad to be able to use it again

A mid-priced blender with extended functionality, the "Tefal BL962B40 Ultrablend Cook High Speed Blender, 1300 W" is very nearly a jack-of-all-trades; frozen desserts such as ice creams, nut butters, dough are among those not documented or with a dedicated function. Its heat-tempered glass bowl can accept up to 1.75 litres if cold or chilled but 1.4 litres when heated to allow for steam that may be generated; lesser quantities are marked in 250ml steps. It includes a cleaning brush, which may be semi-superfluous as the machine can supposedly self-clean, but its use can prevent cuts from the very sharp blades. One noted omission is a tamper-rod in the event that some ingredients do not fall onto the blades or that remain too chunky for purpose at the end of the program. It is strongly recommended that, when used to heat or cook, the machine and especially the jug be allowed to fully cool before handling or dismantling for storage.It offers 8 individual automatic program settings (compote, hot sauce, multigrain milk, coulis, soup, green smoothie, milk shake and ice crush), 10 speeds plus pulse action and a range of temperatures from 40-100-deg C in 5-degree steps enabling it to warm or boil, and time adjustment. Each setting can be adjusted and the result is visible in an LED panel. Texture is also infinitely controllable according to purpose or preference. A removable cap can be raised to release excess steam during cooking and to add ingredients. The machine offers an easy-clean function where some water and a drop or two of washing-up liquid are all that is necessary other than to turn it on for a few seconds and empty the contents. A quick rinse with fresh water and it's ready to go again.With a powerful 1300W motor and 45,000 RPM blade speed, it should be well able to handle almost anything. Softer ingredients can be left fairly large, hard ones cubed down to 2-3cm per side. Leafy vegetables such as kale and spinach are easy to incorporate into a recipe and herbs such as parsley, basil or sage should normally be added later rather than sooner for flavour and colour retention. Where relevant, any pits need be removed (avocado, cherries, plums, peaches etc). Tefal fail to indicate whether or not frozen fruits and vegetables can be used where appropriate. It can also make 'milk' using almonds, cashews and other suitable nuts as well as from soy beans and rice. Mayonnaise and other such dressings should be easy and quick to produce, possibly all-in-one, although that is another undocumented procedure. It can also grind coffee beans and anything else that is hard, including turning cubed or crystalline sugar into powder for dusting or use in icing.When preparing soups, it could allow some of fridge contents possibly slightly beyond their best but still edible to be thrown in with some stock (gel or cube) and a few other ingredients and possibly later frozen, smoothies can follow similarly omitting the stock. The blender can be a means to reduce food wastage and to get kids to eat a wider range of fruits and vegetables.The base and the top section are individually large and heavy and the machine can be very noisy when operating, especially when blending, crushing ice or frozen fruits etc when the motor is working at its hardest. Due to the overall weight, over 6Kg, it needs a solid surface on which to operate. This could potentially replace several other household utensils and thus save on storage needs and worktop space. It may be a less expensive alternative to a Vitamix, for example, but the Vitamix can do more and they include a great many recipe ideas. The brand's products are extensively promoted on TV sales channels and their capabilities repeatedly demonstrated whereas Tefal's are not. Many of Vitamix's recipes are freely available on-line, and there are several books dedicated to Vitamix with recipes included. They may offer a solution to Tefal's unforgivable omission. Alternately, this machine provides an opportunity for an imaginative user to develop their own recipes.Its documentation comprises three volumes, a large safety guide, a smaller operational guide and the warranty data, each of which is multilingual. Noticeable by its absence is a recipe book, or at least a recipe section within the manual. There is a single very basic recipe offered for each program option but that falls far below what is reasonable especially for the price to be paid for the machine. Tefal's website offers only four recipe ideas at the time of review which is far too few and insufficient to provide its purchasers and users with enough information to use it confidently from the outset for a full and varied range of recipes in every mode with the expectation of a 'perfect' result each time. The User Guide leaves many questions unanswered, specifics unexplored and also fails to suggest suitable speeds and temperatures appropriate for certain ingredients or types of recipe. For its documentation alone, Tefal barely deserves 2/10 but they often fall seriously short in respect of recipe ideas and detailed usage information.

For fairly liquid foods: soups, smoothies, sauces, this is a very effective blender; the very high speed blending blades comfortably obliterate most food stuffs leaving a very smooth textured end result. Crushing ice for slushes is no problem, nor are nuts to make your own dairy-free milks and, of course, fruit for smoothies. What sets this device apart is the heating element allowing it to be used for making soups and sauces.The blender is very easy to use, and safe, the lid locks securely into place and will not run without it being locked and the whole machine is very stable during use even at maximum speed. Cleaning is relatively easy, especially due to the cleaning cycle which utilizes the blender itself to swill soapy water around the jug; however, the jug itself is quite heavy and cannot be submerged which can make removal of more stubborn food a chore. The pre-programmed settings are readily selectable and you can also manually set your own program.Whilst this blender makes soups and smoothies simple it is very squarely aimed at liquid foods and is not a great device for thicker pastes, e.g. guacamole, as it is unable to pick up any food that gets stuck to the sides or under the blades.A good convenient machine for hot and cold liquid foods, would have been ideal when we were refitting our kitchen last year.

I’ve made several types of soup, all of which have been a success! Easy to clean and the fact you can see everything through the glass is great.

When I received it, I was surprised that there was no factory package without warranty card and instruction.Now I've only used it six times and it's broken.🙁🙁🙁

It’s something amazing. It does all you need. Its makes soups perfect! Put whatever you one, press the button, 30 min and three fresh dishes of soup is ready!