The Vitamix E310 Explorian is Vitamix’s lowest-priced blender with a medium-sized container and is part of the Explorian Series of Vitamix blenders.
So does that mean it will do what you want your blender to do for your and your daily blending needs?
Credit: Vitamix
We’ll answer that question here and satisfy your curiosity about Vitamix and the E310 at the same time in this review.
We have a table of contents below that allows you to navigate to whichever sections of this review most interest you, or you can just keep reading.
If you’re in a hurry you can see the Vitamix E310 on Amazon here with current pricing, shipping options and any discounts.
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What About Vitamix?
Vitamix has been making high-performance blenders for about as long as any company has been making them. It makes its blenders in Olmsted Township (Cleveland), Ohio where it is based. Vitamix has been based in the same place since 1946 and has been privately owned by the same family from the start.
Vitamix’s founder, William Barnard, popularized using blenders to blend nutritious foods and is where the name comes from, “Vita” meaning life in Latin.
William Barnard also starred in what many consider to be one of the first infomercials when he starred in a television commercial for Vitamix in 1949.
Vitamix has been considered a pioneer in using their blenders to make everything from soup to ice cream and as a result, Vitamix has grown steadily over its many years in existence and now sells commercial blenders to Starbucks and McDonald’s in addition to the household blenders that Vitamix sells like the Explorian 310 and 320.
The current head of the company, Dr. Jodi Berg, is William’s great-granddaughter and is the fourth generation to lead Vitamix.
So What Is A Vitamix E310 Explorian Blender?
The Vitamix E310 Explorian blender is Vitamix’s entry-level blender. It’s also very simple to use, just like the other Vitamix Explorian blender, the E320.
Credit: Vitamix
The variable speed Vitamix E310 has a fairly powerful motor attached to the same Vitamix blender blade design that you will also find the more expensive Vitamix models. The blender blade design is what makes Vitamix blenders work so well.
The stainless steel blades are designed to create a vortex in the middle of the blender, called the “Vitamix Vortex”, that will pull your blender ingredients away from the sides of the blender container, and into the vortex where the blades can get to work dicing them into creamy liquids.
The blender container that comes with the E310 is a medium-sized 48-ounce container with 3-inch diameter blender blades.
The large-sized container is 64-ounces with 4-inch blades and is the standard sized container for the Explorian E320 and other models like the Vitamix 5200 and the Vitamix Professional 750. You can also read our detailed reviews of some of these other Vitamix models, the Vitamix Explorian 320 here, the Vitamix 5200 here, the Vitamix A3500 here and the Vitamix Professional 750 here. Additionally, you can see several blenders reviewed together, including this model and other Vitamix and other blenders here.
You’ll next want to know what kinds of things your Explorian E31o can do every day in your kitchen. The next section below should give you some pretty good ideas.
What Can You Do With The E310?
You might have a pretty good idea of what you can make with your Vitamix E310, but some of these suggested tasks might be new to you and some may inspire you to create something new.
Here Are Some Liquid-Based Foods That You Can Make With The E310:
- Soup – You can make hot soup from a cold start with some broth and your choice of soup ingredients. It takes about six minutes to make from start to finish. The soup heats up over that time from the friction of the blender blades with your food ingredients and that heat gets transferred into whatever soup broth you’ve put into the blender.
- Milkshakes – One of the first things you might think of to make with your E310 is a milkshake. The difference is the creaminess that comes with the “Vitamix Vortex”. Many loyal Vitamix users swear by the quality of the shakes they make with Vitamix machines. Just add milk, ice cream, ice, and almost any other ingredient to your blender and blend to your desired level of thickness.
- Ice Cream – You can make a simple version of ice cream by adding milk to milk to some sugar, ice cubes, and vanilla extract. Experiment with additional ingredients like fruit, peanut butter, and nuts.
- Smoothies – Many people just make smoothies with their Explorian blenders because they love the creaminess of the blend that the Vitamix blender blades give to their favorite smoothie recipe. The possibilities are almost endless starting with ice cubes and some kind of juice followed by frozen fruit. You can stop there or keep going with herbs, liquid or powdered vitamins, supplements, etc. Many people also opt for leafy greens and other vegetables instead of fruit, and with or without fruit as the base of their smoothie.
- Sorbets – You also have a lot of different sorbet options that you can make with your Vitamix E310. The options are almost unlimited and based on whichever fruit options that you want to use. Just start with frozen fruit and blend until you reach your preferred sorbet thickness
- Juice – Whole food juicing is one of the first things that Vitamix did with their blenders starting in the 1930s. Basically blend your chosen fruit or even some vegetables and blend until it’s been “juiced”. There will be residual pulp, but it’s good fiber. If you really want to get rid of the pulp you can always manually strain it.
- Sauce – All kinds of savory sauces are available for you to make with your Vitamix E310. One favorite is Tomato sauce. Another favorite is Hollandaise sauce. Sauces, savory or sweet, are something that professional chefs usually use their blenders for, and chefs really like Vitamix
- Dips – A great dill dip starts in a Vitamix. Add some mayonnaise, parsley, onion, sour cream, dill weed, and salt. Blend it all together until the consistency is right for you. Avacado dips are really fun to make in a Vitamix Explorian blender also especially since you can use the Pulse button to control how coarse or smooth you want your dip to be. Play around with your blender to find your favorite thickness.
- Salad Dressing – Oil and vinegar are the usual starters to start a salad dressing, followed by almost anything, eggs, mustard, anchovies, lemon juice, strawberries, blueberries. apples, etc, etc. Mix and match to even invent a new one. Keep experimenting.
- Baby Food – Your Explorian blender is a great way to make your own baby food. The best thing about making your own baby food is that you get to choose the ingredients that you give to your baby to eat. The next best thing about it is that you can choose how thick or thin to make it based on how long you blend your baby food and how much liquid (water) you add to start. Use the Pulse button (see below) to give you the most control in making the baby food that you know your baby will enjoy.
- Food Prep – You can also use your Explorian blender for chopping and other food preparation if you just don’t feel like using your cutting board to do it manually.
You can also use your Vitamix E310 to process “dry” ingredients like coffee beans, whole grains, and dough, but if you’re going to use your blender for tough jobs regularly, then you should get the 32-oz. Vitamix Dry Grains Container.
Some dry ingredients like spices and coffee can stain your container over time and is another reason to blend everything dry in the dry container.
The Dry Grains container has “dry” blades, marked with a “D” in the picture below. These blades are designed to process dry foods and the blades are configured differently for dry ingredients.
Credit: Vitamix
The standard wet blade container will still work for blending dry goods, it just won’t work as well and may get stuck when trying to knead dough, for example.
Here Are Dry Ingredient Foods You Can Make With Your Vitamix E310 Blender:
- Nut Butter – Blend a creamy nut butter out of whichever nut you choose with your E310. Just add some oil to your choice of nuts into the blender and blend on high speed until you get the consistency that you want for your own nut butter. You’ll have to use your tamper to keep your ingredients from getting stuck.
- Ground Coffee can be made with any coffee beans you want, but beware that over time some kinds of beans may stain the blender container.
- Non-Dairy Milk – There are a lot of non-dairy milk options to choose from based on your choice of ingredient. A lot of people like to make almond milk with their Vitamix blenders. To make almond milk, just add water to raw almonds and blend to your preferred level of consistency. You should also use raw almonds for almond milk (or other nuts) and soak them in water, at least overnight for best taste.
- Dough – Adding flour, yeast, and salt and blending to your E310 and blend them together on “High” speed. Then add some hot water and olive oil and use the Pulse button to blend until a ball of dough forms. Then take that dough ball out of your blender and let it rise in a covered bowl for as long as your yeast requires.
- Flour – Use your Explorian to make flour from grains or nuts by blending at high speed until your flour is finely ground. Make sure to start with enough whole grains or nuts to clear the blender blades.
- Batter – Use your Explorian to make pancake or waffle (or other) batters that are super-whipped and would require a lot of hand mixing to get the same amount of air in the batter.
- Ground Spice – Throw in whatever spice you want to grind into your E310, and make sure you use enough whole spices to give your blender blades enough spices to process.
How Do I Use My Vitamix E310?
It’s pretty simple to operate your Vitamix E310. There are only two buttons and a dial on the control panel the Variable Speed Dial, and one of the buttons is the “On/Off” button. One thing to note, make sure the Variable Speed Dial is turned all the way to the left, in the “1” position before you turn the blender on.
Once you turn your Explorian on, use the Variable Speed Dial (see the image below) to increase speed. You have full speed control to increase the speed from “1” all the way up to “10” by rotating the dial to the right.
Credit: Vitamix
The button on the left side of the control panel is the pulse feature which used the “Pulse” button (see above). The Pulse button will operate the blender for as long as you hold the Pulse button down. The Pulse button will work at whichever blender speed you’ve selected on the dial, from 1 to 10, giving you speed control even with the pulse feature. Use the pulse feature when you just need a quick chop or blend or use when you don’t know how long it might take to process some ingredients to see how it blends in increments.
How Do I Clean My Vitamix E310?
You can clean your Vitamix E31o in the dishwasher, but you can also run the motor to clean it with some warm water and dishwashing liquid. This “self-cleaning” feature is more manual than automatic but still simple.
Fill the container half full with warm water and a few drops of dishwashing liquid and close the lid securely. Starting the Variable Speed Dial at “1”, increase slowly up to 10, the highest speed, and run the machine anywhere from 30 seconds to 60 seconds. Then drain the soapy water, rinse your container, and that is the “self-cleaning” function of the Vitamix 310, no more than 60 seconds.
What They Don’t Tell You About The Power Rating Of The Vitamix E310?
The E310 blender motor is rated at 1,380 watts (120V and 11.5 amps). Vitamix uses “peak” horsepower when describing each model’s horsepower. Peak horsepower is the power that the blender has right when you turn it on before the motor has any resistance to it. Peak horsepower isn’t really much help to you other than if you use it to compare other blenders that are only rated in peak horsepower.
Other Vitamix blenders like the Vitamix E320 or Vitamix 5200 have 2.2 “peak” horsepower, for example. The peak horsepower of the E310 is 2.0. So the rated power of the E310 vs the E320 or 5200 is 2.0 vs 2.2, but again, this measure isn’t very much help.
The much more meaningful power rating is operating horsepower or mechanical horsepower. Horsepower is calculated by the rated watts. One unit of horsepower is equal to 746 mechanical watts, so 1,380 watts is 1.85 horsepower. so the Vitamix E310 has an operating (or useful) horsepower of 1.85.
This is enough horsepower for most blender jobs, and there’s only a small difference in power between the E310 vs the E320 or even the E310 vs the Vitamix 750.
What Color Options Does The Vitamix E310 Have?
The E310 comes in three colors: Black, Slate (or Gray), and Red.
These colors apply to the area in the blender base around the control panel, above the bottom, and not including the control panel or the lid.
You can see each color option here and use the link below each image to check current pricing and availability on Amazon.
Black
Credit: VitamixCheck availability and the current price of the Black Vitamix E310 Blender on Amazon here.Slate
Credit: VitamixYou can also see the latest pricing and availability of the Slate (or Gray) Vitamix E310 Blender here.Red
Credit: VitamixAnd you can see the pricing and availability of the Red Vitamix E310 Blender here.
What About The Medium Size Container That Comes With The Vitamix E310?
The medium (48-ounce) container that comes with the Vitamix E310 is mid-sized or medium-sized container compared with the larger 64-ounce full-sized containers that come with the Explorian E320 or the Vitamix 750.
Credit: VitamixThe Vitamix E310 medium-sized container is a good size for most blending jobs and has the advantage of fitting better under your kitchen cabinets than taller containers since it only measures 18 inches from the bottom to the top of the blender and most kitchen cabinets are higher than that.
You may decide, however, that you need a larger sized container. Vitamix does sell large containers separately but they are not designed to work with the E310 so Vitamix doesn’t recommend using them with the Vitamix E310.
If you still want to try using a larger sized container, go with the Classic 64-oz. container for the E310 rather than the low profile 64-oz. container since the Classic container has 2.8-inch diameter blender blades and the low profile 64-oz. container has 4-inch blender blades. The motor of the E310 is better suited to the similar-sized Classic blades. It should still work with the Low-Profile container but not as well as a more powerful blender motor will.
You can see the Classic Container on Amazon here and make sure that you only use the tamper that comes with that container, not with the medium-sized container, or vice versa.The E310 container has a 2-part lid, one part is a smaller lid that fits inside and is removable from the larger lid, the other part, that covers the top of the blender.The small part lid is removable so you can insert the tamper into the blender container while blending or to add ingredients while blending. The tamper is something you might use regularly while blending if you’re blending a lot of nut butter, ice cream or other chunky ingredients.
Credit: VitamixThe tamper that comes with your E310 is designed to fit the medium-sized ounce container and not touch your blender blades while they’re blending by stopping it from going further into the blender with the Tamper Splash Disk (see the illustration above). It’s important to only use the tamper that comes with your E310 since other tampers may be too long and actually hit your blender blades while they’re blending at their highest speed!The smaller lid can also be conveniently used to pour ingredients into the blender, it’s marked with 1-ounce and 1/2-ounce marks to help you measure them out.
Credit: VitamixThe larger part of the 2-part lid is what keeps everything inside your blender while you’re blending. To help it do this, the larger lid has two flaps on opposite sites of the lid to grab hold of the container.
What About The Warranty For The Vitamix E310?
The standard warranty that Vitamix provides with each Vitamix E310 is 5 years. You can also buy an extended 3-year warranty direction from Vitamix.That’s longer than most small appliances but less than the 7-year warranties that Vitamix provides with other blenders. The warranty period is a rough measure of how long each manufacturer expects its products to last, at least.Vitamix warranties are pretty good, they cover you for a catastrophic failure or just wear and tear over the warranty term. Vitamix even covers shipping to their repair center and back to you after the repair, or replacement if they can’t repair it.About the only things not covered by the warranty are cosmetic damage and or damage caused if you’re using your blender recklessly or commercially, that is not for home use.
What About Automatic Overload Protection?
Automatic Overload Protection is a built-in feature on the Vitamix E310 that will shut off the blender if the motor gets too hot. This might happen if you run the blender too long at high speed, or even low speed (it is better able to cool itself at higher speed).If Automatic Overload Protection is triggered, your Explorian will shut off and you won’t be able to turn it back on again until it cools off, usually about 20 to 45 minutes.To keep it from overheating, don’t let it run unattended and use your included tamper to break up air pockets or push anything that gets stuck in the blender into the blender vortex or blender blades.
What Are The Vitamix E310 Specifications?
Dimensions With The Container: 11 inches deep, 18 inches high and 8 inches wide
Blades: 3-inch stainless steel “wet” blades designed to create a vortex, the “Vitamix Vortex” so that ingredients spin into the vortex and blades from the sides of the blender
Horsepower: 2.0 peak horsepower (when it starts) and 1.85 operating horsepower (when you’re actually using it).
Electrical: 120 V, 50-60 Hz, 11.5 Amps
Where Is It Made?: Cleveland, Ohio
What Comes In The Vitamix E310 Box?
The Vitamix E310 box includes the blender base, the two-part lid, 48-ounce container, and cookbook.
The Vitamix E310: Our Recommendation
So is the Vitamix E310 going to do what you want it to do every day in your kitchen?
Our short answer is yes! That is, yes for most of you blending as we suggest in the section above about what you can actually do with the E310. A lot of happy blending customers swear by their E310s. Some have even gone back to their Explorian blenders after trying more expensive models like the Professional 750 or the Vitamix 5200.
The Vitamix E310 is also the entry-level Vitamix blender, the least expensive blender. It still creates the important “Vitamix Vortex” that so many users love and believe to be what makes Vitamix blender food taste so good. But, it has a less powerful motor, a smaller container than other Vitamix blenders, and a 5-year warranty instead of 7.
So, if all you really care about is the Vitamix Vortex making great smoothies, nut butter or hot soup, then the E310 may be the best blender for you. You can also buy a 3-year extended warranty from Vitamix when you register it to give you 8 years of total protection (a strong recommendation).
Just make sure that you buy the extended warranty right away if you want one since it will cost more if you buy it after more than 30 days from purchasing your Explorian 310.
