From making refreshing smoothies and frozen cocktails to soothing soups and smooth sauces, a blender is an incredibly useful gadget to have in the home kitchen that you may reach for every day. You might be using your blender so often that you find it doesn’t seem to work as well as it used to, due to the blades dulling over time and repeated use. Not to worry as a quick online search leads to a number of seemingly easy hacks for sharpening your blender blade — including one myth that you should actually avoid at all costs: Using ice.
We spoke with smoothie expert Joni Brosnan, owner of Joni’s Kitchen in Montauk, New York (and author of upcoming cookbook “Joni’s, A Love Letter to Summer in Montauk”), for her opinion on the matter. She exclaimed, “Please don’t do this to your blender!” when asked about using ice as a maintenance tool. Unless your blender is one that is made for blending ice, you should think twice about putting ice cubes in the blender at all, as they can actually damage the blades. Brosnan agrees, saying, “Add the ice last when making smoothies to prevent the blades from getting strained,” since the order you put ingredients into a blender matters — and ice can lead the blades to become even duller or break entirely.
The right way to maintain your blender and blades
Now we know not to use ice in the blender, how should the appliance be kept in shape? Brosnan recommends simply keeping on top of your cleaning routine, saying, “The blades wearing down are less [of a] concern if you wash them regularly after use.” Luckily there’s a foolproof method to safely clean your blender, which is to fill your blender pitcher no more than halfway with warm water and a little bit of dish soap and then turn the appliance on.
Brosnan also recommends a deeper clean of your blender every now and then, which is simply to “run some lukewarm water with baking soda and vinegar through the pitcher to really keep it fresh,” and to avoid washing the blades or the pitcher in the dishwasher. If you stay on top of your regular and deep cleaning, then your blender blades should stay in good shape for quite some time. However, Brosnan suggests that you may want to replace your pitcher more regularly if it’s made of plastic rather than glass as it can break down over time.
