An Immersion Blender Is The Ultimate Tool For Perfectly Creamy Salad Dressings

Are you struggling to make a creamy homemade salad dressing without using mayonnaise, egg yolks, or heavy cream? You could turn to store-bought emulsifiers like soy lecithin. Or, you could whip out your handy dandy immersion blender and transform any salad dressing recipe into a silky masterpiece in no time. The hand-held blender on a stick will quickly emulsify — or break down and bind — the oil, vinegar, and the rest of the ingredients into a creamy sauce. And, if your immersion blender has a whisk attachment, it can also be used to aerate the dressing and make it even creamier.

Technically you could try to make a creamy vinaigrette by rapidly whisking the ingredients together by hand until they emulsify. But why whisk your arm off and risk a thin dressing when an immersion blender will do the trick in a matter of minutes? 

If you're not yet familiar with immersion blenders, they are super easy to use. They're basically a wand with a handle on one end and a blender blade on the other. One key to using them is that you want to make sure to always use a container with high enough sides that the ingredients won't fly out all over the place. Many immersion blenders come with a tall, somewhat slender mixing container that has the perfect dimensions to accommodate its particular size. If yours did not come with such a container, look for something that's tall enough that the blender's entire wand will fit inside without too much space left around it.

Using an immersion blender to make a creamy salad dressing — such as a basic vinaigrette recipe — is as simple as adding the ingredients to the container and blending for a few minutes. While you can move the immersion blender around, make sure to go all the way to the bottom of the container with the wand so that everything gets blended properly — and never remove it while it's on. 

When prepared this way, the salad dressing should stay creamy long enough to enjoy your dinner. However, any oil-based salad dressing that is leftover and saved for later will likely separate with time. Luckily, this is easy to fix: Just give it another go with the immersion blender.

Thanks to its powerful ability to emulsify, the immersion blender is the perfect tool for blending a wide variety of foods beyond just creamy salad dressings. In fact, immersion blenders are super helpful when it comes to making creamy soups, mixing batters, fluffing eggs before scrambling, and even whipping mashed potatoes. Just about anything that requires rapid whipping can actually be done by an immersion blender instead. 

So say goodbye to tiring yourself out when making homemade whipping cream, cake frosting, and mayonnaise — this tool can take care of all of those jobs as well. It can even purée the perfect morning smoothie. Unlike the regular blender, you'll be able to feel the consistency change as you blend so you won't have to keep checking for lumps to be satisfied that your smoothie is actually smooth all the way through. With so many different uses, an immersion blender is truly a star in the kitchen.