Tool Spotlight: Stand mixer

A stand mixer can make a cook’s life much easier. Sure, it is possible to kneed pizza dough and whip cream by hand, but save your strength for the rest of your busy day.  A stand-up mixer is a multipurpose tool that is a major time saver. The appliance frees up your hands so that you can focus on other parts of the recipe while it does the work.

Mixers deliver a consistent texture to your batters and dough, and offer multiple speeds to properly blend all types of ingredients. Hand mixers are a smaller alternative to stand mixers that have a lower price tag. Although hand-held mixers are convenient, they cannot handle large quantities or heavy mixing. It can also be difficult to incorporate all the ingredients with a hand mixer and they can make quite a mess if you are not careful.

With multiple attachments, a stand mixer can substitute for many other kitchen tools. While the number of attachments are there to help, their uses can be a bit confusing if you have never seen them before. The standard beater tool is great for mixing dough while the dough hook is better for kneading, or put on the wire whip to prevent aching wrists while whisking.

There are also attachments that turn your mixer into quite the jack-of-all-trades. With a slicer/shredder attachment, your mixer can easily shred cheese in mere moments. Or clip on the slicer to get a uniform cut on your vegetables. You can even mill grains, make ice cream, juice, create pastas or sausage with a number of attachments.

Buying a stand mixer can be a wise investment, but some brands can costs a few hundred dollars and come with only standard attachments. If you don’t want to spend that much on one tool, there are plenty of affordable mixers on the market that can get the job done. So pull yourself out of the dark ages and start mixing with a new stand mixer.