  A new class of renormalizable gauges is introduced that is particularly well
suited to compute effective potentials in spontaneously broken gauge theories.
It allows one to keep free gauge parameters when computing the effective
potential from vacuum graphs or tadpoles without encountering mixed propagators
of would-be-Goldstone bosons and longitudinal modes of the gauge field. As an
illustrative example several quantities are computed within the Abelian Higgs
model, which is renormalized at the two-loop level. The zero temperature
effective potential in the new gauge is compared to that in $R_\xi$ gauge at
the one-loop level and found to be not only easier to compute but also to have
a more convenient analytical structure. To demonstrate renormalizability of the
gauge for the non-Abelian case, the renormalization of an SU(2)-Higgs model
with completely broken gauge group and of an SO(3)-Higgs model with an unbroken
SO(2) subgroup is outlined and renormalization constants are given at the
one-loop level.
