Having an immersion blender can make preparing foods like soups and smoothies super simple! They’re usually a cost-effective alternative to larger appliances like stand mixers or blenders, and take up much less space. But they’re pretty limited on what they can do. But when we saw a 5-in-1 immersion blender that promised to do everything from chop to froth, we had to try it.
What is the LINKChef Immersion Blender?
The LINKChef 5-in-1 Immersion Blender is a 20-speed handheld blender that’s designed to help the everyday home cook create dishes with ease from the comfort of their kitchen. It comes with four attachments: a milk frother, a whisk, a chopper, and a mixer, as well as a 600mL measuring cup, or beaker, to use for blending. Everything was packed in its own bubble wrap, and there was a QR code for a 24-month extended warranty right on top.
The appeal of this blender is that it makes mixing quick and easy. This is mostly thanks to its size. The chopping attachment is fitted with stainless steel blades and holds up to 500mL, not as big as a standard food processor. The 600mL mixing beaker is a good size for making things like smoothies, baby food, and salad dressings, but if you want to make a large amount of say, soup, you’ll need to move your mixer to a larger pot.
All of the containers are made of BPA-free material, and the blender itself is said to be small enough to use with one hand. I thought the surface was a little on the slick side, but I personally didn’t have any trouble holding it while it was in use. The blender comes with two speeds — standard and “turbo,” along with a dial for adjusting the intensity when it’s used in either of those modes.
Did the Blender Work?
In my opinion, it did, although some attachments worked better than others. I tested this immersion blender by using the attachments to create four different items. With the chopper I made salsa, the mixer made hummus, the frother was for my morning latte, and the whisk crafted some DIY mayonnaise. The blender assembled in just a few seconds — I just popped on an attachment and plugged it in.
But let’s dive a little deeper in my overall thoughts.
Performance
I’m really happy with the way all of these attachments worked. The least impressive one for me was the frother, which I used to make some foam out of oat milk for my coffee. At first, I used the standard mode and it barely frothed at all.
When I upped it to the “turbo” setting, however, it really made it nice and frothy. I think using this attachment to make whipped cream would have been a better use of my time.
The next attachment I used was the mixer, which is the one I was most excited about. I cannot tell you how many soup recipes I’ve just abandoned because I didn’t have one of these tools before. I wasn’t feeling creamy soup the day I tested it, so I decided to try making my favorite spread of all time — hummus.
I used the beaker to blend this one, and tossed in whole garbanzo beans, along with a whole clove of garlic, plus tahini, salt, and lemon juice. The mixer worked really well and blended everything up in about a minute. I saw that there were still a few unblended garbanzos, so I ran it in “turbo” mode for a few seconds and it really smoothed everything out. I’ve only ever made hummus in a blender before, so it was nice to make it so fast and with an attachment that’s way easier to clean than a full-sized appliance.
Next, the chopper! I was initially just going to chop an onion with this attachment but figured, why not actually make something you can eat right away? That’s how I ended up with a ton of salsa. I crammed so much stuff into this attachment and honestly thought I had filled it too much and might need to take some stuff out. Again, thanks to “turbo” mode, the tomatoes, tomatillo, onion, garlic, and three different peppers blended together perfectly.
This experiment might have taken more than a minute to complete, and I did read in the instruction booklet that you should only use the immersion blender for 1 minute, then let it rest for 10. I’m not recommending pushing that limit, and I won’t make a habit of it, but it did take a little more time to crush this all up.
Finally, my most ambitious test of the LINKChef 5-in-1 Immersion Blender led me to make my own mayonnaise. I’m not sure why I decided to do this as I have plenty of store-bought mayonnaise in my fridge, but I had some vegetable oil that I wasn’t using much in other recipes so I figured why not? The whisk was the only tool that was a bit messy.
This is probably because the mixing bowl I used was just not deep enough, but also because the attachment itself just seemed to have a bit less control on the device. I think that the wand shape of this tool doesn’t offer the same control that an electric hand mixer does, and I don’t really think I’ll get much use out of the whisk going forward. That said, nothing splashed out of the bowl, and now I have a ton of mayonnaise to give away. If you don’t have a hand mixer and hate mixing by hand, it’s not a bad attachment to have, it’s just not for me.
One thing about the mixer and the chopper is that you do have to remove the adapter bit that comes attached to the handheld part. This, like everything else about the blender, pops off with an easy twist—there was no pinching or squeezing required to remove or replace any of the attachment heads. When you need to use the frother or the whisk, you’ll need to reattach this part.
Cleaning
Cleaning the blender was pretty straightforward. Everything rinsed clean easily, and because the chopper attachment’s blades separated from the base it was easy to wipe down with a sponge without any trouble. The one attachment that was a little tough to clean was the mixer. The blades didn’t separate, and because the sides are so tall to prevent splashing, the well was a bit deep, so it took a bit of care, although not much time.
Storage
I found storing it pretty easy, and I have a pretty small kitchen. I placed the whisk, frother and mixer attachment in the beaker, wrapped the cord around the handheld bit, and covered the chopper with the lid it came with. All in all, that’s three pieces of kitchenware to keep, which I did without trouble in my kitchen cupboard.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed using this immersion blender. All of the attachments did what they said they would do, and the chopper and mixer will really make cooking more fun and easy. Cleaning it was quick and simple. The biggest appeal to me is that it’s small enough to store pretty much anywhere (I could easily tuck this in a drawer if I had to) which makes it a lot more appealing to me than an appliance like a food processor or blender as I move a lot and am usually in apartments with not much kitchen space.
This story originally appeared on Don't Waste Your Money.
