Use this trick to clean your blender with ease

While smoothies and the many other foods you can make with a blender are delicious, one of the worst parts of using a blender so often is having to clean it. The oddly shaped, bulky carafe can be hard to clean: The blades are sharp and hard to reach and the lid has a dozen different nooks and crannies that make the chore a slog. While some blender canisters are dishwasher safe, many are not — and even the ones that are will take up a lot of space, if they fit at all.

But there’s an easy way to clean your blender without scrubbing or taking it apart. Here’s how it works.

An easier way to clean your blender

For starters, the best thing you can do after using your blender is clean it immediately. Letting food or other liquids sit and dry will only make cleaning it more difficult.

As soon as you’re done blending, move the contents into another carafe, cup or serving dish. Then, to clean the blender:

• Fill the blender halfway with hot water from the tap or a kettle.
• Add a few drops of dish soap to the carafe.
• Optionally, add half a lemon.
• Pop on the lid and run the blender on high for one to two minutes.
• Pour the contents into the sink.
• Rinse the carafe and lid in the sink with warm water.
• Fill the carafe once more with hot or warm water.
• Place the carafe back on the blender base and run it for another minute.
• Rinse the lid and carafe once more and set aside to dry.
• If there is anything still stuck you may have to run a sponge over it lightly and rinse. Try not to use a metal scrubber as it will scratch the plastic.

If you do this each time you use your blender, you shouldn’t need to deep-clean and scrub it each time you use it.

Note that some blenders have a cleaning preset that you should use each time you run it in the steps outlined above. It’ll often employ the pulse function coupled with some high-speed blending to help break any sticky bits free from the sides and crevices.

Of course, some foods you blend will be more difficult to clean, such as thick contents or food that has dried inside the carafe. These will ultimately need to be scrubbed, and it’s not a bad idea to hand-wash the blender every few uses or so. But thanks to this quick cleaning tip, you can use your blender more often without dreading the cleanup.

Read more: Best blenders of 2021