How to Use an Immersion Blender

A hand blender is a magic wand for your kitchen, useful for puréeing soups, emulsifying sauces, and whipping up smoothies

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Crushing ice for a frozen cocktail? Reach for a full-sized blender. Need a quick smoothie for your morning commute? Break out your personal-sized blender, then hit the road with its on-the-go jar. But if soup or mashed potatoes are on the menu, an immersion blender is what you need. It does the trick whether you’re serving scrambled eggs, a peach smoothie, or butternut squash soup.

An immersion blender is a handheld, electric mixing appliance with a sleek handle-grip top, baton-like shaft and a spinning blade covered by a protective guard at the bottom. Due to its long cylindrical shape, it's often called a stick blender or hand blender. Plug-in or cordless, it's designed to complement your countertop blender, not replace it.

"An immersion blender combines the attributes of an automatic blender or mixer with the manual stirring motion of a spoon," says Larry Ciufo, who oversees CR's blender testing.

This small appliance is used for emulsifying hard-to-blend liquids (think oil and water), whipping concoctions in a bowl, or mixing soups, stews, or sauces in a stovetop stock pot. They’re also ideal for whipping eggs, blending pancake batter, and puréeing thick soups like lobster bisque, clam chowder, and lentils.

Some come with attachments like whisks, beaters, milk frothers, choppers, and jars, so you can use it to create a variety of foods and drinks, including salad dressings, milkshakes, cappuccinos, baby foods, salsas, and even peanut butter.

At CR, we test immersion blenders by how well they blend frozen peaches, strawberries, and yogurt for smoothies, and how well they purée soup vegetables in water. We also test each blender's power in revolutions per minute.

Using an immersion blender is simple. Submerge the blender's blade completely into the food or drink you want to mix before turning the appliance on. Move the blender around the container to mix all the contents. Keep the blade submerged to avoid splatters.

"It's simple," says Ciufo. "Just switch the device on and swirl the stick around to blend. It's more manual work than a full-sized blender, but it's also less clean-up."

Avoid pot scratches: Even though it has a blade guard, avoid scraping the bottom or sides of the pot, especially if it has a non-stick finish. One method that helps is slightly angling the hand blender or tilting the pot. Be careful if food you are mixing is hot, however.

Beware of pot suction. Sometimes a hand blender can stick to food at the bottom of a pot, causing suction. If this happens, don't yank it free. Instead, to avoid splashes, tilt the blender at an angle before lifting . Ideally you want to blend ingredients a few inches from the bottom so this doesn't occur.

Mind the cord. Place your pot near an outlet and position the blender where the cord won't tangle while cooking.

Spin it clean. After using, hold the blender just above the soup level and run for a few seconds to remove excess food and liquid.

Wash carefully. Never wash the blender while it's plugged in. Unplug and detach the blender's motorized top from the blade, and only wash the blade half. For best results, wash right after use with dish soap and water.

Convenience: Immersion blenders fit in the palm of your hand, with simple controls operated by the press of a button. Jar-less, they’re also easy to clean compared with other blender types.

Portability: Handheld blenders travel well. If you hit the road for Thanksgiving, you can pack an immersion blender to help whip up the gravy at dinnertime.

Easy storage: Their small size makes immersion blenders easy to stash in a kitchen cabinet or drawer.

Stovetop use: Blending directly in a stock pot eliminates the need to transfer hot liquids, like soup, to a countertop blender.

"An immersion blender is efficient for big batches of sauces, hummus, vinaigrettes, and some soups," says Jose Luis Falcon, executive chef at Elia Mediterranean Restaurant in East Rutherford, N.J., where he makes up to 20 liters of sauce at a time. "For example, we use the stick blender for aioli, a garlic mayonnaise emulsion that we infuse with roasted pepper and herbs for more flavor."

But Falcon says immersion blenders aren't the best choice for superfine purées, so he uses a full-size Vitamix blender for soup bases and a mixer for mashed potatoes. "For mashed and sweet potatoes, you want to whip them up so they’re not mushy," he says. "We also use a Vitamix blender for smooth and creamy soups. But if you want it chunky, you can use an immersion blender."

Currently there are 13 immersion blenders in CR's ratings, including models from All-Clad, Braun, Breville, Cuisinart, KitchenAid, Ninja and Vitamix.

Below, in alphabetical order, you’ll find the three top-rated immersion blenders according to our tests. For more blenders, review our comprehensive ratings. And for shopping advice, check out our blender buying guide.

Keith Flamer

As a kid in Delaware, I lived a few blocks from Bob Marley, who once said, "It is better to live on the house top than to live in a house full of confusion." At CR, I'm psyched to help readers navigate this cluttered, hyper-commercialized world we live in. I've covered luxury real estate, interior design, and culture—reporting on everything from smart home technology to racial hypocrisy at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate. Since the pandemic started, I cherish simplicity, covering accessible topics like decorating, cooking, and cleaning. Give me a smoothie blender over a mansion any day. Blenders are slightly easier to clean.