Will a blender or mixer do more good in the kitchen?

Blender and mixer are two very popular household appliances. What is more useful in the kitchen is a difficult question. It is difficult to compare them, because they are created for different purposes and in extremely rare cases are interchangeable. But you can still give priority to one of them: it depends on what dishes you are going to cook most often.

What is the difference between a blender and a mixer?

Imagine for a moment that you need to make dough for pancakes 100 years ago. You would take a fork and mix the ingredients with it. Already feel like a numb hand after a few minutes of whipping? The mixer was created just to facilitate and speed up the mixing process and not let your hand get tired. But what if you need to beat the protein? The speed that you need to work with a fork, and the time that you need to spend on it, is scary. And the point here is not so much in mixing, but in saturating the mixture with air. For whipping, the mixer is indispensable.

And now another situation: you make a sauce of sour cream, herbs, cheese and nuts. First you have to cut the greens very finely with a knife. Then you grate the cheese on a fine grater. Grind nuts in general, except as a hammer or meat grinder, will not work. The result is a mountain of utensils, an hour of time spent, a tired hand and not the most uniform sauce. But a grater, a knife, and a meat grinder could be replaced by a blender. When mixed with sour cream, he would also replace a fork or spoon. And all this in one tank and in one approach!

In the pancake dough, there is nothing to grind with a knife or a grater, and to prepare such a sauce with one fork would be unrealistic. It turns out that the functionality of the blender is wider than that of the mixer, but in some cases it cannot replace the mixer.

To summarize, what is the difference between these devices.

Mixer:

• mixes and whips;
• used with liquid or semi-liquid substances;
• does not know how to grind.

Blender:

• grinds and mixes;
• can be used with both liquid and solid and even very solid products;
• mediocrely whips.

Tip

So that when working with a submersible blender and mixer, the mixture does not splash, fill the container only by 50-60%.

Which is better to choose?

The mixer and the blender have more differences than common features, and even they look completely different. Of course, both would be useful in the kitchen, but if you can only buy one appliance, you will have to think about what is best in your case.

The easiest way to do this is by analyzing the dishes that are most often prepared using these devices. But here we have to make one clarification: blenders are submersible and stationary, and despite the same principle of operation, they will not always be interchangeable.

• Mashed soup

The mixer in this case is useless: we have already said that it cannot grind. With an ordinary blender, you are tormented by preparing, say, 3 liters of soup, because there are no such large containers in household blenders. Have to grind it in parts!

• Mashed potatoes

With ordinary mashed potatoes, everything is somewhat more complicated: a blender will help chop the potatoes without leaving a single lump in it, but, as practice shows, this takes longer with a submersible blender than kneading by hand, and the result is not so amazing. In addition, you will quickly get tired, and the device may overheat! Even if the potato is soft and well boiled: it is still designed to work with substances of less resistance.

The stationary blender will certainly do the job, but how to use the mixer? It can be used only when the potatoes are chopped by hand or in a blender to give it airiness!

• Omelette

Since the ingredients for the omelet are liquid, both blenders and the mixer can handle its mixing. The difference is that the omelet prepared with the mixer will be airier, as the products will not only be mixed, but also whipped.

• Batter

Here the same rule applies as with an omelet: both devices will cope with the task, just a mixer will make the dough more airy and magnificent.

• Cool dough

But with a tight test, a blender is useless. True, many refuse from the mixer with the mixer nozzle, recalling grandmother's methods and giving preference to hands.

• Milk shake

In general, a mixer for cocktails with milk and ice cream is preferable: it makes them airy and foamy. But what if, instead of syrup for taste, you decide to add a banana? In this case, the mixer will not cope, and the blender will have to mix the liquid part with the solid. If you still want to achieve a gentle texture, then the already ground mixture can be whipped with a whisk.

By the way

In the case of cocktails, it is very convenient to use an immersion blender with an additional whisk, working in two steps: grinding and mixing to a homogeneous consistency, and then whipping.

• Smoothie

The mixer will simply break if you try to crush ice with it. Moreover, not every blender is capable of this without overheating. So it is better for smoothie lovers to choose a more powerful blender!

• Mousse, protein, cream

Everything that needs to be whipped into foam is better to be whipped with a mixer. It’s in the confectioneries without him that’s just nowhere. However, if you are not a very sophisticated culinary specialist, in some situations an ordinary blender can beat the mixture enough to make it not very airy and magnificent, but still mousse. But with proteins to the peaks and cream only the mixer will help.

• Cream

It is difficult to give an unequivocal answer with creams: there are so many different recipes! But which device will brilliantly cope with their preparation - a blender or mixer? We advise you to be guided by this rule: if the cream is planned to be airy and gentle, and all the ingredients for it are liquid or soft, choose a mixer, if the recipe contains solid ingredients, but the cream should be dense at the same time, choose a blender.

• Sauce

It all depends on the sauce. If this is a mixture of liquid and soft ingredients like sour cream, ketchup, butter or cottage cheese, then the mixer is suitable. But still it’s more convenient to use a blender: this way you can also add solid ingredients.

It turns out that most of the everyday culinary tasks will help to ease the blender, and for lovers of mashed soups - it’s immersive. The mixer, especially when a blender has a whisk, is only needed by advanced confectioners who are very sensitive to the quality of whipping.