The Hand Blender That Saved My Soup

Soup night used to be my least favourite cooking night, and that took some doing, because I cook almost every day and I love most of it. The problem was never the soup. It was the last ten minutes, when a full pot of hot butternut squash soup had to be coaxed into the countertop blender, two and three cups at a time, with a ladle, while my old dog Lucy stood exactly where the splatter went.

I would pour a couple of cups in, clamp on the lid, hold my towel over the vent, and run it. Then I would scrape the thick puree into a waiting bowl, pour in more, and do it again, four or five round trips, while the rest of the pot slowly went cold on the stove. By the time I got everything back together and thinned, Lucy had licked the floor and I had soup on my apron and dish duty had doubled.

My neighbour Helen mentioned the KitchenAid hand blender at her knitting group, in that offhand way she has, like it was nothing. She said she had stopped lifting hot soup at all, that she just stuck the wand in the pot and moved it around for a minute. I nodded along and did not believe it, because our town is full of gadgets that get used once and go to the garage.

Still, I bought one the next week, partly because Helen had never steered me wrong and partly because I was tired of my own system. It sat in the drawer for two days before soup night, and on that night I used it for the first time. I have to be honest that I half expected a lie.

It blended the whole pot in about forty seconds. I did not have to pour a single cup out. The wand went down into the steam, I kept the tip just under the surface, and it turned the pot smooth while I stood there holding it, Lucy watching from the rug.

What changed for me was not really the tool. It changed the day. Soup used to be the meal that started off fine and ended with me rinsing and juggling. Now the pot stays on one burner, the wand comes out, and I am done at the stove in under two minutes. Whatever I spill after that is one thing to rinse, not four.

Since then this KitchenAid has moved well past soup. It thins a gravy straight in the pan. It smooths a tomato sauce without me reaching for the big blender. The whisk attachment does the egg whites for a sponge cake in about as long as my old hand mixer did, and the mini chopper has made short work of garlic and herbs without me dragging out the food processor.

I had spent twelve years scraping hot soup into a jug. The day I held the wand in the pot and watched it turn smooth, I could have sat down and cried, and it was not about the soup.

Here is the honest part, because I do not like a sales pitch any more than you do. The KitchenAid wand will not crush ice, and it will not make the kind of frozen smoothie my countertop blender makes. On the highest speed it is loud, and you hold a button to keep it running, which you get used to but which is worth knowing. The cord is what it is, a real cord, long enough for me but not wireless.

So I still own the countertop blender, and I am glad of it, because it earns its space for the smoothie I make on summer mornings. But it came off the daily rotation the first week the wand was in my drawer. When something stops being a chore, you start making it more. I have made far more soup these past few months, and that is a nice thing to admit.

Two things surprised me once I looked under the hood, as it were. The shaft and the bell come off the base by pushing one button, and the whole lower half rinses clean under warm water in ten seconds. That is the difference between a tool I reach for and one I avoid, because the reason my old big blender lost my loyalty was washing it, not blending.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If we were sitting at my kitchen table, I would tell you this. If your week involves a hot soup or a sauce that has to be smoothed, the KitchenAid hand blender is the least dramatic good purchase I have made in years. It does not claim to do everything, and that is exactly why I trust it. Get one that feels solid and that comes apart so the wand rinses under the tap. Keep your countertop blender for the frozen and the icy. Give the wand the drawer, put soup back on your table, and I think you will be as pleasantly bored as I was.