13 Best Corded Mixers Tested and Reviewed (2024)

Prepare like a professional: If you are a host and want to make more than one course, soup (hot or cold) is your easy solution. Any seasonal vegetable sweated and simmered with soft onions, garlic, and stock makes the perfect base. Then mix in a little cream, crème fraîche, coconut milk, or toasted nuts for a super silky texture. It can be made the day before, then mixed and adjusted for seasoning and taste on your own time. Then heat and serve.

Your sauces are perfect: What often separates chefs from home cooks are smooth sauces, condiments, and purées. They are brightly colored and pack a punch, best made with a blender. Try a dollop of smooth spiced apple chutney on a plate with a liver parfait (also made in a blender). Or homemade ketchup to go with BBQ meat. A good blender helps take your presentation to a new level.

Enjoy cocktail hour: When the sun is out, your blender is ready for cocktails. Try making a Pisco Sour in a blender with Peruvian Pisco, fresh lime juice, sugar syrup, egg whites, and ice. By hand you will get two parts at a time, but a blender will give you that frothy consistency with 10 parts at once.

Freeze to avoid food contamination: Make smoothies with fruit on its last legs. Cut up fruits such as pineapple, mango, peach and banana, and place them on trays to freeze. Once frozen, put them in a sandwich bag and get enough small pieces to mix with fruit juice or milk whenever you need.

Clean effectively: If you’ve been blending strong flavors like garlic, be sure to give your blender a clean before putting it away. Mix a cup of warm water with a drop of orange juice. The acid from the citrus cuts through the oil, garlic, and stains, and this will remove the worst dirt inside the blender, now it’s ready to wash with hot soapy water.