Immersion blender

This is a game changer for the eight-hour slow cooker enthusiast. Not only can you easily make smooth blended soups right in the cooker insert, you can also quickly smooth out certain sauces that separate or cook unevenly over a long period of completely unattended time—to be perfectly honest, when you come home and lift the lid what you see inside might look a little … rough. Don’t worry about it: As you’ll notice in a lot of recipes for stews and curries and similar dishes, I’ll suggest that you remove the solid ingredients from the pot, puree the sauce in the pot, and then return the solids to the sauce. The browned edges, the separated fats, the lumps all get reincorporated, and the fats emulsify with blending and thicken the sauce slightly—a bonus. You can do this with an upright blender—pour the liquid into the blender jar, let it cool for a few minutes, then put the lid on with the hole in the lid open and a towel over it to prevent an explosion—but an immersion blender will make the whole process so much easier, with much less cleanup. I strongly encourage you to acquire one if you don’t have one already.