My favorite appliance - a stick blender
I love this gadget the most! My Stick Blender
A blender stick can do just about everything your KitchenAid, Food Processor, blender, and drink mixer can do when you have smaller amounts. Stick an immersion stick blender into a pot of cooked vegetables and push the button. Zoom. You have a gorgeous pureed soup. Want to whip one egg white and the giant Kitchen Aid mixer and it can't cope with such a tiny amount? Zoom - One small egg white whipped to perfection with the stick blender's whip attachment.. Have a glass of powdered greens and need to mix it into water? Zoom. Mixed. Better than your hand held drink mixer. Need 1/2 cup of ground almonds and your food processor blades can't even find an almond to grind because there are so few in the bowl? Zap. My stick blender has them ground up in a jiffy.
I love this small gadget so much i could hug it. And I am going to tell you a lot of reasons you will love it too.
All photos on this page were taken by elynmac.
Stick blender, Immersion blender, Stick mixer, Hand blender - Yes, it goes by a lot of names, but it is the same thing, a wonderful time saving tool for cooks
If you like to cook, and have never tried one of these, you should think hard about getting one. Why?
The blender attachment makes a smooth soup or puree from a pan full of vegetables - This is a Chinese model that uses 220 volts that I use in my kitchen in Shan
I remember using a regular blender to blend up a pot of soup. One time my friend did this and the soup was too hot. Boom, the whole thing exploded all over his face and he was quite burnt. That is what happens if you use a regular blender. If you use a stick blender, the soup's steam can be released without blasting up the blender container and burning you. It just whirrs around quietly in the pot, making a smooth and tasty soup with no exploding properties.
This is a photo of me making squash soup. It is so easy. Just cook and blend.
This makes a very tasty soup in as long a time as it takes to cook potatoes.
Ingredients
- Cook for 15 minutes in a pot of boiling water:
- 4 yukon gold potatoes
- Add the following and cook for 5 more minutes
- 4 medium zucchini
- Several cloves of garlic
- or garlic powder to taste
- When the vegetables are cooked
- remove from the stove and let cool briefly then add
- Salt and pepper to taste
- a pinch of thyme and basil
- Blend with the immersion stick blender until smooth
- then add a little cream.
- Serve it up! It's delicious with grilled cheese sandwiches!
Instructions
Most people think of using a stick blender for crushed ice drinks - It's smart to use small ice cubes or already crushed ice...
Okay - being honest, there are a lot of complaints from people who have bought these that they won't do a good job of crushing ice, or that if they use it all the time for this task, it breaks the blender stick. If you are just looking for a machine to crush ice, I would recommend getting something else. They just don't seem to stand up to the task in the long term. But they are great at whizzing up a morning smoothie with fruit and protein powder, and can do it in a flash. They clean up so fast it is no bother at all.
This is what I have used it for in the past few days
- Chop vegetables for the dogs' dinner
- Grind almonds into powder for cookies
- Whipping cream, and also whipping eggs and honey together for making cookies
- Mixing my morning smoothie
- Making breadcrumbs for frying up some zucchini
- Making soup for dinner, as well as making potato and parsnip puree
- I made a small amount of pesto a week ago with the chopper attachment too... so there is no end to what you can do!
The stick blender is wonderful for whipping a small amount of whipping cream
My big mixer can't cope with small amounts. It just doesn't work well. But my stick blender makes whipping 1/4 cup of cream a joy. This was the whipped cream we made for our dessert tonight.
Making babyfood is a dream - And so is chopping vegetables for the dog's food!
Our dogs love to eat vegetables, and we like to give them veggies in their dinner at night. The chopper attachment for my stick blender can take the leftover veggies from our dinner table and turn it into a pile of well chopped leftovers for the dogs to enjoy when they eat their meal for the evening. This is a picture of the swiss chard we chopped up in the blender this evening to make them happy.
Some other options - There are lots of stick blenders out there...
