Everything You Need To Know To About Using Blender
If there is one small kitchen appliance that you probably have in your kitchen apart from the big refrigerator and stove, the blender together with the oven toaster are probably the appliances you have.
The oven toaster is our introduction to the wonders of toasting via indirect heat and can be the first step toward baking! The blender meanwhile is the useful tool that we use when we want thick and creamy milkshakes in the summer or want to turn food into a sauce such as salsa or pesto that’s perfect for dipping chips, vegetable sticks, and other snacks into.
However, making shakes and pureeing vegetables into a paste isn’t the only thing that’s great to do with a blender. There are other ways of making that blender more useful in the kitchen than that!
Did you know that you can make no-cook pasta sauces in a blender? Did you know you can make a fast and easy hollandaise sauce for that fancy Eggs Benedict recipe you’ve always wanted to try but was too intimidated to make at home?
These are just a few things you can do using a blender! To learn how to use a blender better, here is a guide you need to do it all:
1 Roughly chop your ingredients.
Whether you’re going to finely chop or puree the entire contents of the jug, you want to help out the blender do its job properly and efficiently. To do this, the pieces of food need to be able to fit in the jug of the blender. This is best achieved if you do a little prep work. Grab a knife and chop up the vegetables and fruits. There’s no need to be precise since these will be finely chopped in the blender but giving the food a chop means it can drop into the area between the blades and be chopped better. Big pieces will make your blender, and you, work harder since you might need to get in there with a spoon to make those pieces fit. Save yourself the effort of fishing for those big pieces and do it before you place it in the blender jug.
2 Use the “Pulse” button.
Once you have your food ready in the jug, you need to choose the right settings or power button to press. Don’t ignore the “Pulse” button! That button can be the best setting on this appliance! That’s because this “pulse” setting can mean the difference between needing to scoop out food from the blender to get something stuck in between the blades to a 2-second button press that can do the job safely. The Pulse setting is a preset blade speed that allows you to do short bursts of mixing that will automatically stop without pressing another button. In fact, as soon as you remove your finger or release the dial, it will stop and return to the original setting.
This gives you control over your food! If you think that the food needs just little bit more processing but to get to that perfect consistency, this is the button to use. Give it a press or turn for a second or two, release, and check. Do it again a couple more times if needed.
3 Know the other button functions.
If the Pulse setting is too short a burst to do the quick job of finely chopping your food, the other functions will be just handy for your other needs. The buttons and levels of speed will contribute to how finely you need your food to be chopped as well as how fast you need those ingredients to mix and blender together. Your blender isn’t called a “blender” to just chop!
If you need to emulsify or mix two ingredients together better, such as when making homemade mayonnaise or a vinaigrette salad dressing, the blender is the perfect appliance to do this job. For this, you need to learn to use the blender lid cap. Here’s what you do:
- 1. Place all your solid ingredients in the blender jug.
- 2. Close the lid and then remove the blender lid cap. (The cap is the removable center of the lid, creating a small hole where you can add ingredients as it runs.)
- 3. Use a kitchen towel to place over the small hole and process the ingredients at low speed to start the chopping.
- 4. Once it’s become a paste, slowly drizzle the oil through the small hole in the blender lid. Keep the blender running as you do this.
- 5. Keep drizzling, stopping as needed to scrape down the sides, until you finish the oil or the mixture reaches the consistency you want.
- 6. Just for good measure, give it a quick and fast whirl at the highest speed to make sure that everything is well blended.
4 Make more than just milkshakes and purees.
You don’t need to be stuck with making only milkshakes during the hot and dry season! There are blender soups, no-cook pasta sauces, fruit sauces, salad dressings, and even creamy hummus to make in a blender to help make your meals much tastier!
[ArticleReco:{“articles”:[“21364″,”15131″,”13562”]}]We know the dilemma of figuring out which kitchen appliance should be left on the counter and which can be stowed away for future use. Give these tips and this guide a chance to make the blender the useful appliance you look to use every day! We just think that if you learn how to use an appliance—any appliance!—properly and efficiently, you will want to use it more often and make the best use of it for the rest of its functioning kitchen life.
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[ArticleReco:{“articles”:[“18635″,”17537″,”14153”]}]***
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