In my Soup post yesterday, I suggested taking the Potato Soup and putting it in batches in a blender to puree it. The smoothness of the soup is really nice. But there's an easier way to puree soups and that is to use an immersion, or hand, blender. It's shaped like a long wand with a little blade at the bottom end that blends the contents of your soup. It's very handy. When you don't feel like taking a ladle and scooping soup into a blender in batches (because most likely you will have too much soup for your blender) and then having to empty the blender into yet another vessel until you've emptied your soup pot completely, all you do with the immersion blender is immerse it into the pot and hit "go" and whirl away, moving the blender around the pot to catch everything. It's also easy to clean and tucks away into a drawer when you're done.
Prices vary considerably and they are made by all sorts of companies, including Krups, KitchenAid and Cuisinart, to name a few.
Here's an article that rates various brands.
Though the immersion blender might be one of those appliances you don't
have to have, it might be nice if you like to puree and blend a lot of things. Not only is it good for soups, but you can also use it for making sauces and dressings.
I have one of these and it works great. I've saw on tv to puree some squash and add that to the soup to make it a creamy soup. I have not tried that yet but it does not look that hard.
ReplyDeletePureeing squash and adding it to a soup to thicken it or make it creamy sounds great.
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