REVIEW – If you’ve never used an immersion blender, you don’t know what you’re missing. Being able to blend up a smoothie in the glass, or pulverize potatoes right in the pot without dirtying up another bowl can be a time-saver. But, immersion blenders are kind of a one-trick pony. ChefWave thinks they should be able to do more and introduced the InterMix immersion blender to do just that. Let’s get into mixing it up!
What is it?
The ChefWave InterMix immersion blender is an immersion blender that can also whisk and chop.
What’s in the box?
- ChefWave InterMix 500-watt 9-speed immersion hand blender
- Whisk with an attaching collar
- 20oz beaker
- Food chopper with 20oz bowl
- User manual
- 8.5-Inch immersion wand
- 6.3-Inch immersion wand
- Silicone wand covers (2)
Hardware specs
- Rotational speed: 15000 RPM ±10%
- Variable speed settings: 9 plus turbo
- Voltage: 110 to 120 V
- Frequency: 60 Hz
- Power: 500W
- Working time: ≤3 min
Design and features
The blender is well-made with a combination of brushed metal and black plastic making up the handle. The curved back fits in the hand well and the two-button control falls naturally under your fingers. Like other immersion blenders I’ve seen, the buttons are momentary, meaning you push them to turn on and let go to turn off. These blenders are not meant to run continuously but rather more in a pulse mode. The duty cycle for this blender is runs of three minutes or less between breaks. The top button is the pulse button. The bottom button, while also a pulse button, is the turbo button, invoking maximum speed.
When the blender is plugged in, blue LEDs illuminate the buttons.
On top, we see the dial that lets you vary the speed of the blender.
Setup
Setup involves attaching your chosen accessory and getting blending. The blender has thick threads at the end for screwing on the attachment and locking it in place.
Each attachment has matching threads and a small attaching point where the motor engages whatever spins on the attachments.
The immersion wands are fully assembled and contain crazy-sharp blades. The bottom of the wands are metal and have fairly sharp edges that would do some damage to your pots or other blending containers. ChefWave includes two perfectly-fitted silicone sleeves that resolve that issue.
Here, we see the two wands with the sleeves attached.
The smaller wand is pretty typical for most immersion blenders. The larger one gives you some extra reach if you’re blending up something, perhaps in a deep stockpot.
The whisk snaps into its attaching collar.
The whisk is sized to work with the included 20oz beaker.
Another nice addition is the food chopper.
This three-piece addition consists of the top that attaches to the blender, the blade, and the bowl.
When assembled, it stands on its own, easily.
Performance
All the cool attachments are great, but does it work? My lovely wife was working on a key lime cheesecake and needed some graham cracker crumbs. Perfect! I put a bunch in the chopper and got to chopping.
It made short work of the crackers and pulverized them nicely.
Next, she asked me to take a few lumps of sugar that had hardened from the humidity here in Central Florida. Seemed like a good idea – I’ll toss a few small chunks in the chopper and let it do its magic and return the sugar to a granular state. I put them in, snapped the cover on, and hit the button. There was a *snap* and then, even though the motor was running, the chopped wasn’t spinning. What happened?
I twisted the chopper off the handle and these fell out.
These two pieces are the formerly one-piece shaft that slips on the motor. The end of this shaft engages the specific tool you have attached to the blender. What happened is that a particularly hard chunk of sugar wedged between the blade and the bowl, and the high-torque motor simply snapped this plastic piece right in half. After I did this, I more closely examined the manual that cautions against trying to chop really hard things, like ice cubes and very hard nuts. Doh! While sugar doesn’t seem hard, a chunk of it is actually quite hard. My fault, entirely. Lucky for me, the gracious folks at ChefWave sent a replacement. So, let this serve as a caution – this is not designed for heavy-duty chopping. Leave that to the food processor!
A couple of days later, waffles were on the morning menu. My wife likes to add whipped egg whites to increase the fluff of the waffles. Sounds like a whisk opportunity!
In short order, we had stiff, peaking egg whites. Nice!
A few nights later, she was whipping up a big pot of potatoes soup. For the record, it also included sausage and smoked salmon and was delicious. Once the cream base is prepped, it’s time to toss in the boiled and cubed potatoes and blend them in.
The immersion wand did a great job of producing nicely pureed potatoes that blended into the stock perfectly. After that, we dumped in more potatoes and then pulsed the blender a few times. That gave is small potatoes pieces that added texture to the soup. Yum. With the silicone sleeve in place, we didn’t have to worry about damaging the pot’s non-stick finish.
To clean the immersion wands, you fill a bowl with water and pulse the wand in the bowl. The high-speed blade forces water all over the inside of the wand, easily cleaning it. Everything else cleans up easily as well.
What I like
- Great assortment of attachments
- Variable speed
- Comfortable to hold
What I’d change
- While the manual states not to blend hard things, I’d make that warning a little more prominent, and perhaps reinforce the drive mechanism
Final thoughts
This is a nice immersion blender. It is much easier to use for whisking than a traditional hand-mixer, and for light chopping than a food processor. I see this getting a lot of use in our kitchen.
Price: $34.95
Where to buy: Amazon (Save 20% with coupon code: G20INTERMIX expires 2-1-2022)
Source: The sample of this product was provided by ChefWave.
