An awesome and serious kitchen tool
This is a great mixer. You should probably own one. Not sure? Read on! Before we bought this mixer, I thought of residential model kitchen stand mixers in terms of my mother's Oster Kitchen Center or my grandmother's Sunbeam 2371 MixMaster Stand Mixer, White (but about 60 years older, with yellowed plastic...) Think: two beaters, a bowl that turns based on beater friction, basically a hand mixer on a stand of some sort, in concept if not design. When you think of the KitchenAid, you should think of a large restaurant/commercial Hobart mixer down-sized to fit on your counter. It works exactly the same way - and it's an awesome thing. Pros: - Powerful. You can put cold butter or refrigerated cookie dough in this and begin mixing it immediately. The motor is very powerful, and I have seen almost nothing that it can't get through. Kneading very stiff dough even works here - sometimes you might hear the motor strain a little, but I've never run into something that it simply couldn't get through. - Mixing attachments. This unit comes with a mixing paddle (the attachment that I use most often), a whisk (next most often) and a dough hook. I use all three - in that order of frequency. - Accessories. I don't own any of the accessories, but there are some great ones out there. On my list of accessories that I will get someday are: the pasta attachment - KitchenAid KPRA Pasta Roller Attachment for Stand Mixers , and the pasta extruder - KitchenAid KPEXTA Stand-Mixer Pasta-Extruder Attachment . There are others that I'm less sure would get lots of use in my kitchen, but they might in yours! These include the "attachment pack" for meat grinding and vegetable slicing - KitchenAid FPPA Mixer Attachment Pack for Stand Mixers , the grain mill - KitchenAid KGM Stand-Mixer Grain-Mill Attachment and others. Even an ice cream maker KitchenAid KICA0WH Ice Cream Maker Attachment which I admit I'll consider if my Cuisinart ice cream maker ever truly dies. - Tilting head. I really like this feature, since the bowl is securely attached to the mixer base, and you just rotate the head up and out of the way. It keeps the beater over the bowl and lets anything needed drip back into the bowl, reducing mess somewhat. - Orbital action. This is great, since one mixing implement orbits around the bowl giving full coverage and leaving no places "unmixed" for you to discover later in the recipe. - Variable speed. You can vary the speed from very slow to "time to clean the spatters off of the ceiling" As with any tool, I can think of a few cons as well: - The head rotates on a metal pin. This is a good design feature since you can slide the pin out to remove the mixing head when necessary, though it's never been necessary for me in the 8 years I've owned the device. The problem is that the motion and vibration of the mixer, at least for my unit, causes this pin to "self-remove" and invoke the unit's self-disassembly "feature". The solution, however, was ridiculously simple - I just wrapped a single wrap of electrical tape around that part of the mixer neck, and the pin has stayed put for years now. Black electrical tape on my black mixer is nearly invisible and nobody has ever questioned or commented on it. - "Walking dough." When using the dough hook and kneading even a moderately-sized dough, the dough tends to "walk up" the dough hook and instead of reaching the wide neck and falling back into the bowl, it keeps walking up and around the hook, sometimes getting up to the mixer head, resulting in discarded greasy dough. If I keep the batch size relatively modest and spray the hook with non-stick spray before kneading, I can usually get it to work just fine, but it's not as fool-proof as mixing with the paddle. - Cleaning. The bowl is simple - it's stainless steel, and you can wash it by hand or stick it in the dishwasher. The mixing implements, however, should be washed by hand. Hand washing isn't hard, and they'll come out great and last forever. If you put them in the dishwasher, however, the metal (maybe it's aluminum?) will degrade and tarnish with the harsh detergents used in the dishwasher. This will result in a grey powdery substance forming on them, which could get into your food if not carefully cleaned after the dishwasher. And the substance is ugly. So avoid any problems, and hand-wash always! On balance, I think you should just go buy this mixer. If you don't want this one, you should be looking at more expensive models. Stepping up the Kitchen Aid line, you can move to a mixer with a stationary head and a bowl lift to lift the bowl into the mixing position like this: KitchenAid KP26M1PSL Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Stand Mixer, Silver or this: KitchenAid KV25GOXBU Professional 5 Plus 5-Quart Bowl Lift Stand Mixer, Cobalt Blue For those looking for even cooler appliances, you might consider this big boy: Viking Professional 7 -quart Stand Mixer, Black or maybe this: Cuisinart SM-70 7-Quart 12-Speed Stand Mixer, White but I must state I've never used either tool. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Read more
