Nov 02, 2008 03:38 PM
41976 Views
(Updated Nov 02, 2008 04:03 PM)
My tryst with wet grinders goes many years back when we owned an electric appliance store in my hometown Miraj and were leading suppliers of wet grinders to local restaurants. Back then, Saravana was a common name and many hotels and restaurants who bought Saravana grinders(which are unfortunately not available now) then still use them.
My mom / grandmom however prepared the daily idli / dosa batter on our Rico mixer. With the flooding of markets with portable wet grinders, we thought it was desirable to buy one, especially given our regular requirement and the strain that the udad(white gram) usually puts on a mixer motor.
We bought the Elgi Ultra Pride, finally, after doing some research / comparison of existing products in the market. I would easily rate it as a very fine machine though I won't go into so much comparing it since I did not have to go through the ordeal of buying a poor quality machine and then replacing it with Elgi.
No issues so far given the fact that the little machine has a fairly rigorous schedule of 30-40 minutes grinding activity almost 5-6 days / week. And our idlis / dosas are consistently fluffier, as the unique grinding on stone helps the batter to ferment and rise properly overnight.
Usage is simple. It is modeled like the traditional mixer except in place of a jar, it has a removable vessel with a stone base glued properly to a steel drum. Inside you have to place the Elgi's patented conical grinding stone while the point of contact of the drum with the machine is a hard plastic coupler on the base. The grinding function happens at a uniform speed and therefore the machine has only one power on-off button. Add the ingredients to the vessel, turn on grinding and leave the machine to its own for 20-25 minutes. An overhead lock holds the stone in place while the vessel rotates around it. On completion of cycle, you can simply pull out the stone and empty the contents in another vessel(in case you are grinding rice and white gram separately which is recommended) or keep the contents in the vessel itself for use next morning. Check out video of demo on the company's website https://elgiultra.com/homeapp/index.htm
It comes with an additional fitting - a coconut scraper, which you have to buy separately. Though a useful fitting, I bought Elgi more for the grinding function and less for the coconut scraping thing which can be done by an expert(willing to spare some energy) faster mechanically than on an electrical scraper.
If you are a first time buyer, I would recommend Elgi, of course, if you are ready to loosen your purse strings a bit(by about Rs.1, 000 since Laxmi is cheaper by that amount). For the additional money you pay, you get a 5 year warranty on motor(mfg. by General Electric), a rarity since usually warranties are for an year.
