by Cynthia VanBibber
(Fayetteville, AR, USA)
I love my Jack Lalanne, though some have complained...
I suppose I love it because I know how much juicer $100 should buy. For thousands of dollars you can buy something that you can use and practically abuse without having it break down.
At $100 I figure I can have a juicer that I can rely on, but that I have to baby. I juice carrots with no problem, but what I really like to have such a juicer for it ginger juice. Ginger juice with carrot juice -- yummmm.
Anyway, back to the juicer. I think it's wonderful that I don't have to peel the ginger; I can just stick it in there whole. But I treat my juicer gingerly (just as I do my wonderful Oster Fusion blender when making hummus). I figure it's like asking my 100 dollar juicer to go the extra mile: I give it breaks and if the motor starts to freak out (and I'm constantly on guard that it will protest) then I'm prepared to shut it down immediately. If this happens, I open everything up and make sure the working parts are free and I take the opportunity to clean the screen (ginger has a great deal of pulp and this can block the juice from straining through the basket).
There are obvious engineering oversights with the Jack Lalanne: the reservoir that collects the pulp when connected (as it seems it should be) pushes the basket a kilter so that in turn the straining basket, and the blade with it, might not turn freely. And you simply cannot run the juicer when this is occurring ... because if you do you risk overheating the motor and killing it. This has happened a couple of times and thank goodness, my juicer sprung back to life after I put everything back together making sure all parts moved freely.
I avoid this now, and forever, by being extremely careful. To get around this defect in engineering, I don't connect the juice reservoir as it's "supposed to be connected". I set the juicer on top of a cutting board that's the width of the juicer. I place the pulp reservoir under where it's supposed to be (but there's now a gap because of the cutting board platform). I drape a wet washrag over the top of the shoot so that pulp flies out, and if it doesn't make it into the reservoir, at least it hits the rag and falls down into the reservoir that way, or onto the counter-top just outside the reservoir. Yes, it's a little messy, but still, compared to the champion, it's easy to clean.
And I get ginger juice and carrot juice made regularly at a fraction of the cost of going to our health food grocery store and buying it there. I'm confident that my Jack Lalanne has already paid for itself.
I love that it cleans up easy enough to where I want to use it frequently.
So again, the Jack Lalanne is not the best workhorse, but it is a great deal for what it costs and will get the job done if treated sweetly.