About Alton Brown's stand mixer on Good Eats?
AB’s always talking about equipment on Good Eats. Where to get them, what not to get, wattage, etc., etc. Does anyone know if there is an episode where he talks about his stand mixer or stand mixers general?
Ah! Old Fireball, Alton’s stand mixer. I love the flames he’s got on it!
His mixer and many of the others you will see bakers and chef’s use is a Kitchenaid mixer. These have been the gold standard of stand mixers for YEARS! They are true work horses in the kitchen.
I’ve posted a link to the KitchenAid site for you to browse through. From personal experience, most home cooks/bakers do very well with the 5 quart, tilt head model. The 4.5 quart doesn’t have as much power; important if you are going to be making bread and doing a lot of heavy mixing. Think cookie doughs too.
And there is a huge variety of attachments available for these machines. My most used one is the food grinder/food mill pack. I make all my own tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes and can it. I also make about 3-4 bushels of apples into applesauce and freeze it. The food mill makes that whole process much easier! Beats standing there for hours cranking on the old Foley food mill.
My mother has the slicer, shredder attachments. She used them a lot but that was before food processors were available. Unless I’m doing a really BIG batch of something that requires a lot of slicing or shredding, I don’t use that much. You can get everything from a juicer attachment, a pasta roller, pasta extrusion dies (they fit in the food grinder), ice cream maker and more.
A Kitchenaid mixer will last at least 20+ years, usually closer to 25. Yes, that’s 25 years. I have two on the counter; my mother’s unit which is about 27 years old (4.5 quart) and mine which is about 18 years old (5 quart). If you divide up the purchase price over than many years, it’s suddenly a very good investment.
They will knead bread dough, beat cream or egg whites in a flash, mix the heaviest cookie doughs and mix about anything you can throw at them. And Kitchenaid’s food processors are just as good.
Shop around for pricing. The Kitchenaid site will be more expensive. If you watch for sales, you should be able to get the 5 quart tilt head model for a bit over $200. It will come with the wire whip, the paddle, the dough hook and the mixing bowl. Even Lowe’s carries some of the attachment packs.
Yeah, it’s definitely an investment but is so worth it if you like to bake and cook. I bake a lot of the bread we eat in the cooler months, do all that canning of tomato sauce, applesauce, make home made sausage, bake all kinds of cakes, cookies and such on a regular basis and would be totally lost without my mixers.
I’m probably being a bit of a snob on this but don’t waste your money buying anything else. It won’t have the power or last nearly as long. There was a period of time where you saw a few of Viking’s new stand mixers that they brought out a few years ago on some of the Food Network shows. They disappeared in a hurry and the Kitchenaid mixers were back. I didn’t hear good reviews on the Viking ones at all. If a stand mixer is out of your budget right now; Kitchenaid also makes a very good hand mixer. That would still give you more power and longevity but not the cost. Giada DeLaurentis uses the hand mixers a lot.
Yeah, I’m addicted to Food Network and the Cooking Channel…………LOL