Immersion blender! Now what?

December 28, 2023 8:00 AM

I was given an immersion blender. I've never had one before. What should I do with it?

I guess blend things immersively? No food restrictions, am (obviously) not into cooking, am not opposed to soup but rarely make it.

posted by The corpse in the library to Food & Drink (29 answers total)

My #1 immersion blender utility is to make a single smoothie or milkshake inside of the cup I'll drink it out of. Reduced mess, reduced faff, only need to make exactly as much as I want.
posted by phunniemee at 8:02 AM on December 28, 2023

Make mayonnaise. Homemade is so much better and takes very little effort with an immersion blender.
posted by ssg at 8:03 AM on December 28, 2023

Make homemade Caesar salad dressing
posted by supermedusa at 8:04 AM on December 28, 2023

It makes a very good very easy tomato soup which I feel like you might like even if you're not a soup person, I do something like this but it's very flexible.
posted by LeeLanded at 8:10 AM on December 28, 2023

Any kind of blended soup. You just boil all the ingredients (you can go by a recipe or whatever seems like a nice combination) and then stick the blender in.

Cleaning tip: Run the blender for a few seconds in a container of clean water when you're done, and before the stuff on it gets a chance to dry.
posted by trig at 8:10 AM on December 28, 2023

My main use is also the smoothie/shake use. No need for extra containers, and no more stirring for minutes with a spoon just to still find clumps of protein powder. Everything goes in a quart size mason jar, zap it for a few seconds with the blender, done.

Number two is to blend soups or sauces in the pot I'm cooking them in. Great for a creamy vegetable soup, tomato sauce from whole tomatoes, that kind of thing.
posted by egregious theorem at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2023

Things I most often use my stick blender for:

- bulk-scrambling 12+ eggs (usually along with cottage cheese for extra protein) and seasonings for meal-prepping breakfast casserole/quiche/strata/egg bites/etc
- two minute mayo when I'm making something mayo-intensive like devilled eggs, the various mayo-based salads, or a bulk sandwich spread for meal prep or events. See also two minute hollandaise and two minute toum.
- when making any kind of red sauce, I prefer to use canned whole tomatoes and just blitz them down to the consistency I'm looking for
- emulsified dressings of the non-mayo kind
- I do eat a lot of soups, and even for a chunky soup like broccoli cheese I like to hold some broccoli aside and blend all the rest of the soup together for emulsification and then add back those broccoli bits afterwards

Less frequent, but if I'm making any kind of slurry, whether that's just flour and milk or maybe packet gravy or similar dry-into-wet mix, I can usually get the job done and have the blender clean again in the time it would take me to get all the lumps out with a fork. You CAN do this with a little milk frother, but that thing always goes rogue in the junk drawer while the stick blender has a specific place on my counter.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:14 AM on December 28, 2023

If you blend an onion, a tomato, a chilli and a pinch of salt (plus ginger and garlic if you have it) that's the base for a bunch of sauces, and it is SO QUICK, you don't need to finely chop anything. Just fry up that sauce and add whatever you fancy (leftover meat or veg or potatoes, or a tin of chickpeas) and then maybe curry powder or maybe coconut milk or maybe just some extra water to make it whatever consistency you like.
posted by quacks like a duck at 8:15 AM on December 28, 2023

I've seen on instagram (so it must be real) that immersion blending does a better job of combining dyes with frosting than, say, a KitchenAid (so the color comes out darker)...
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:28 AM on December 28, 2023

Tuna mousse: blend equal parts drained tuna from a tin, soft butter and mayo with some capers, a drop of ketchup (really, be careful with the ketchup), and a teaspoon of lemon juice. Blend. You can do this in the container you plan to keep it in. It takes about a minute, but make sure there are no lumps of butter in the mix. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Eat on toast or crackers or whatever you like.
When you've tried it once, you can try different seasonings, like a bit of chili or pickled peppers, or some dill or parsley or both.
When I was a kid, this was on every fancy dinner table, or else it would be its appetizer sibling, chicken liver mousse*, which takes longer to make. But back then the ratio was half and half tuna and butter, with just salt and pepper for seasoning. It was delicious, as I remember it, but this version seems better to most contemporary tastes.

We use the immersion blender for pesto. Purists find this very wrong, but it makes homemade pesto accessible and it is much better than store bought. Apart from as a pasta sauce, pesto is great for sandwiches, on potatoes, with fish and hundreds of other purposes.

* the concept for the chicken liver is the same: you mix the liver with butter.
But here you have to cook the livers with shallots and port wine first, so it may not be for non-cooks. Chop one or two shallots finely, and fry them in butter, they must not brown, but the moisture should be reduced. Add the livers, turn up the heat and stir as they cook to a light brown. You want the liver to still be pink inside at the end of this phase. Add a tbsp of capers and stir, then add a 1/4 cup of port and cook till most of the alcohol smell has evaporated. Add in a lot more butter and turn off the heat. Put the whole thing into any container with straight-ish sides and blend till the mixture is smooth. Put it in the fridge till it is completely cool and looks like a very smooth pâté. Serve with cornichons and baguette. You can also make a gehackte leber this way and it will be very good. I still put a bit of wine in there, even thought that isn't traditional.
posted by mumimor at 8:44 AM on December 28, 2023

Whipped cream! Just heavy cream and vanilla.
posted by happy_cat at 8:45 AM on December 28, 2023

Dutch babies!
posted by dum spiro spero at 8:48 AM on December 28, 2023

I forgot the seasoning in the liver recipe, maybe since I don't expect anyone will be interested. Basically, you have to season a little all the way through. A bit of salt helps to get the water out of the onions. You can add a twig of fresh thyme and a bay leaf in with the onions, but take them out before blending. Then again a bit of salt, and some freshly ground pepper with the livers. Then when you blend the whole thing, you taste and adjust the seasoning.
posted by mumimor at 8:57 AM on December 28, 2023

Seconding making pesto with it.
Puree ingredients for popsicles.
Roast and puree you own pumpkin or winter squash for pies and muffins, etc.
Honestly, puree all the rest of the ingredients for the pie once you've done the pumpkin.
Mix ingredients for a bread pudding or quiche.
posted by carrioncomfort at 9:13 AM on December 28, 2023

I was gifted one, but rarely use it. It's big and rather long...I don't drink smoothies, and I prefer a chunky spaghetti i sauce over smooth...I would love to use it more often, but it seems to only puree everything to death.
posted by Czjewel at 9:37 AM on December 28, 2023

It's worth it for blended soups. I have a big glass jar that I keep just for the immersion blender, for blending and storing. I clean it by adding some dish soap to the jar or a mug, and zapping it, then rinsing, so easy. It takes so little space in a drawer compared the the blender I haven't used in ages.
posted by theora55 at 9:58 AM on December 28, 2023

Mine came with a chopping bowl attachment, and TBH, I use it that way far more than I ever do as an actual immersion blender. It's my go-to for mincing onions or garlic.
posted by briank at 10:52 AM on December 28, 2023

Dressing! I haven't bought a bottle of dressing in about five years...
posted by suelac at 10:53 AM on December 28, 2023

Whipping cream
blending batters (Dutch babies, pancakes, tempura, Yorkshire puddings, whatever),
pureeing soup (or more typically just part of a soup batch to give body without destroying all the chunky goodness),
making mayo or aoili,
blitzing small batches of hummus or romesco
Blitzing a jam if it’s too chunky for a given use
posted by janell at 11:26 AM on December 28, 2023

Baby food
posted by kathrynm at 12:48 PM on December 28, 2023

Another vote for hummus and blended soups!
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:22 PM on December 28, 2023

Soups and apple sauce mostly
posted by slightlybewildered at 1:48 PM on December 28, 2023

An immersion blender is the tool of choice for making cold process soap. Maybe it would be useful for other non-cooking hobbies?

As for blended soups, it can be used to fully blend, or just blitz around in the pot to blend a bit, make a soup creamier, without going all the way to smooth.
posted by dorey_oh at 2:47 PM on December 28, 2023

If you make homemade mac and cheese, you can use an immersion blender to save the sauce if it splits. The goal is to have an emulsion of cheese and bechamel and an immersion blender makes emulsions. I don't know if you can use it to rescue other split sauces, but it's worth thinking about.
posted by Hactar at 3:59 PM on December 28, 2023

The most impressive dish I regularly make with it is a 5 ingredient broccoli soup from that angry Ramsey character on tv. There’s no recipe to speak of - just boil the broccoli with lots of salt, save some of the cooking water, fry the broccoli, and then blend the broccoli back into the cooking water. Garnish with olive oil, a nice cheese and if you got almonds otherwise it’s a 4 ingredient soup. Still good.

In terms of recipes:

• Crepes
• Buttermilk pancakes or just for blending a mixing up quickly
• Roasted & Toasted salsa

posted by zenon at 9:01 PM on December 28, 2023

I use mine the most for blending a bunch of garlic with a little oil, to freeze in cubes for cooking with later (tastes much better than jarred minced garlic, and fresh doesn't work well for me - I pay the extra for prepeeled so I can just dump them all in and make it in seconds). The same thing works well for fresh herbs that are close to going bad, with minimal waste. Sometime I also want to make some ginger or mixed ginger-garlic cubes to further streamline cooking but haven't gotten around to it yet.
posted by randomnity at 9:13 PM on December 28, 2023

It's a step in making curries in an instant pot (e.g., Butter Chicken). I was stunned to find I could create that delicious gravy in indian dishes just by blending up my cooked tomato-onion-spice sauce.
posted by pjenks at 7:08 AM on December 29, 2023

I use it for soups, gravy, tomatoes, milkshakes, etc.

One thing you should take note of: If you have any light-colored cookware like Le Crueset, be very careful to hold the blender just above the base of the pot (it tries to suck itself down because of the vortex created). I learned the hard way that the blender will scratch the bottom of Le Creuset if it drags along. I have used Barkeeper's Friend, but no success. I guess a loved pot is a happy pot!
posted by dancinglamb at 8:34 AM on December 29, 2023

My biggest kitchen discovery of 2023 was how easy it is to make toum (Lebanese garlic dip/spread/sauce) with a stick blender.
posted by dr. boludo at 10:22 AM on January 1