A pastry blender is a useful and inexpensive tool for blending cold butter or flour shortening into recipes like shortbread crusts and cookies. Its U-shaped wires make it easy to chop ingredients together and it can also be used for mashing potatoes or bananas.
A pastry blender, also called a pastry cutter, is a useful tool in the kitchen. Many recipes for shortbread crust and rich cookie or scone butter or shortening call for the addition of cold butter or flour shortening. While you can accomplish this process with two knives or a fork, using the pastry blender makes it easier to properly blend the butter into the flour.
This useful kitchen tool is undoubtedly inexpensive, usually around $5-10 US Dollars (USD), or slightly more if you want a very fancy one. It has several U-shaped wires that connect to a straight handle. Some types of pastry blenders have a slight ridge on one side of the handle that gives you a place to rest your thumb. It’s worth looking for a type with this additional thumb rest, as you can better control the pastry blender if you can use your thumb to apply pressure to the flour/shortening mixture.
The blender’s U-shaped wires do a good job of chopping ingredients together, and unlike working with your hands to combine the two, the pastry cutter stays cool so you keep the shortening at the optimum temperature. Bakers develop various techniques for using them; maybe cut the butter in small amounts between the strands at first, then shake the blender back and forth to create an incorporated mix. For standard dough, your job is done with the pastry blender when the butter/flour mixture resembles raw cornmeal. If you’re adding liquid to the pasta, some people still use the blender or hand blend at this point so you’re adding enough liquid for the pasta to stick together but not be too sticky.
Even though the pastry blender is specifically designed for preparing pieces of fruit and the like, you can use it for a few other things. It’s a perfect masher for one or two potatoes if you want to make quick mashed potatoes. You can also make delicious guacamole with a pastry cutter. The threads aren’t terribly strong, so you won’t want to use it to mash anything exceptionally hard, but it will work well for mashing some bananas for banana bread or turning your butternut squash into a delicious puree.
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