What Is an Immersion Blender? 5 Uses for the Appliance

An immersion blender is a handheld kitchen appliance that blends and purées large-batch dishes. This popular kitchen tool is helpful for making blended dishes like soups, stews, sauces, and smoothies. An immersion blender—also called a speed hand blender, stick blender, or blending wand—is shaped like a short pole with stainless steel blades at the end and a power button on the handle. Some models have variable speeds that allow you to control the blending power of the blades.

To use an immersion blender, immerse the blade end into your pot of ingredients, turn the blade on, and move the blender through the mixture to uniformly blend it. Most models come with a dishwasher-safe detachable stainless steel blade for easy cleanup. Because immersion blenders are smaller than a regular blender, you can easily store them in your utensil drawer, freeing up countertop space in your kitchen. The best immersion blenders are cordless, making blending in the kitchen as easy as possible.

You can use an immersion blender to make a variety of different dishes, including:

1. 1. Soups: You can use immersion blenders to make both cold and hot soups. Simply place the immersion blender directly into your pot of cooked or stewed vegetables and blend the hot liquid by hand. The further you immerse your blender into your pot of soup, the less chance of splatter. With a typical blender, you may have to blend your soup in small batches to accommodate the large quantities. Immersion blenders make cooking soups like gazpacho, butternut squash soup, and tomato soup much easier, quicker, and clean-up friendly.
2. 2. Smoothies: You can use your immersion blender to make various smoothies or milkshakes by simply placing the immersion blender into a large jug of ingredients such as fresh or frozen fruit. If you’re making a smoothie out of frozen fruit, allow it to thaw a little and add lemon juice before you attempt to blend it.
3. 3. Sauces and dips: An immersion blender makes it easier to assemble sauces, such as marinara sauce or pesto sauce. An immersion blender is also useful for blending ingredients for dips like tzatziki or hummus.
4. 4. Batter: If you’re in a pinch and don’t have a hand mixer to cream together butter and sugar for a batter, you can use an immersion blender to do the job. You can also use a whisking attachment on an immersion blender to make whipped cream or whisk egg whites into a meringue.
5. 5. Salad dressings: The quick-moving blades of an immersion hand blender are perfect for emulsifying olive oil, herbs, seasonings, condiments, and kinds of vinegar together to create a number of salad dressings, from balsamic vinaigrette to cilantro lime dressing.

The key difference between an immersion blender and a traditional blender is the way that they function. With a regular blender, you place your ingredients inside the jug of the blender, which purées them together with blades located at the bottom of the device. By contrast, you place an immersion blender into a pot of ingredients and move the blades through the mixture by hand to blend it together. This gives the operator more freedom and control over the blender blades.

If you’re making a soup in a pinch but you don’t have an immersion blender, there are a few other kitchen tools you can use as a substitute, including:

1. 1. Standard blender: The most obvious substitute for an immersion blender is a traditional kitchen blender, which will achieve the same blended result as an immersion blender, but without the freedom of the handheld attachment.
2. 2. Hand mixer: You can use a hand mixer in place of an immersion blender. Your hand mixer will likely come with different attachments, such as beaters or a whisk attachment. You might end up with large pieces of pulp or chunks if you use this method, but you can remove them from your mixture if you don’t like the texture.
3. 3. Stand mixer: A stand mixer is a less ideal candidate for substituting an immersion mixer, but you can use it to mix or whisk large quantities of food.
4. 4. Food processor: A food processor is similar to a blender but will come with different sharp blade attachments, giving you more control over your blended foods.
5. 5. Potato masher: If you don't have any of the above electrical appliances, a simple potato masher can do the job of mashing food into a purée. Potato mashers are great for mashing cooked fruits or vegetables into mush for baby food.

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