KitchenAid Mixers comments

[Boogity]

Emerald's thread has me thinking about getting a KitchenAid mixer for our kitchen (where else, silly?). But they are soooo expensive and I need to really seriously weigh the pros and cons of this kind of purchase as we are on a very strict budget. DW makes pies, cakes, and other misc. pastries all year 'round and she is exceptionally good at it. In our younger years she has won several baking contests for her pies.

Prices range from $300 all the way to $900 U.S. Well I can tell you right now that $900 is totally out of the question - even $300 is a stretch for us. The accessories are pretty pricy, too. But with her arthritis mixing is getting to be more than she handle. However, we're both getting up in years and I'm not 100% sure she would want to use it. We were given a nice food processor a few years ago and I think we have used it maybe twice. You know how old people are . Here on our old farm we get used to old fashioned ways of doing things and sometimes it's really is hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

Can you guys offer any thoughts on this idea? And what accessories would you recommend, and why? Thanks.

 

[Mickey328]

You can find the stand mixer for about $200 and it hasn't changed much in quite a while. I paid that for mine a good 10 years ago. I LOVE it! They're heavy and solid machines; real work horses. I have the juicer and the slicer and the grinder attachments. Since we got a separate juicing machine, I don't use the juicer much but I use the other attachments regularly. I like to grind my own meat and it works extremely well. The only complaint I had about the slicer was that it cut too thin...I like carrots a bit thicker. DH took some pliers and bent the slits out a bit. They're not "pretty and even" but work perfectly fine for us. If you use a mixer on a fairly regular basis, I would highly recommend the KitchenAid.

 

[the funny farm6]

you might keep an eye on craigslist, i have seen them on there reasonable. i am having a hard tim telling hubby that i need one. it seems i could combine many of the appliences that i use already into 1.

 

[ORChick]

I got mine many years ago specifically to mix a rather heavy dough for a particular German fruit bread (that my husband needs for Christmas ). That recipe had bent the dough hooks on my Oster mixer beyond repair. I do use it fairly often for other things, and find it ever more useful as I get older, and less inclined to do hand kneading etc. But I don't have any attachments. Over the years I have accumulated enough stuff in my kitchen that I don't need those extras; I can get the job done with other things I already have.
You might want to see if a friend has one your wife could borrow for a bit, to see if it is useful to her. It sounds as though she is comfortable enough in her kitchen that perhaps she wouldn't find it terribly useful. Or she might think that a good hand mixer (rather than a stand mixer) is adequate.
Don't get me wrong; Kitchenaids are great machines, and I'm glad I have mine, but they are expensive, and don't do anything that a strong arm and a wooden spoon can't do

 

[chickenjoe]

They are the swiss army knife of mixers. They are also work horse. worth the money Like someone else said check craigslist, flea markets garage sales thrift shops, ebay.

 

[Emerald]

I have to say I saved for quite a while to get mine but did it mostly thru swagbucks. and lucked into a buy of the century on it.. Amazon was having a sale on the big pro600.. it started at $269 and the day I bought it the priced dropped to $259, I emailed them and said hey! and they refunded me the $10 into my account. I had no choice of colors and got one that is called grey pearl. Then I was doing some research on the attachements and saw a rebate for this machine and printed it off and added the cut out of the box bar code and a print out of my amazon account where it showed what I paid and I got a cash rebate for $40 and they sent me a two year free subscription to food and wine magazine. I have to say that, that was the best deal I've ever done with my scrounging and couponing and rebates.
I'd saved enuf to buy it for the normal $399(well almost probably more like $369 haha) and so I bought the meat grinder/fruit strainer attachement too and hubby just told me to buy the sideswipe(or other rubber beater blade) for it early so I could use it for thanksgiving and cookie making.
I didn't get to use it that much when I first got it due to knee surgery and not being able to stand for long times but I've used it quite a bit in the past three months.
it was a bit different to do my sauce for canning with as I suspect it is just a "learning curve" but it did kinda make it easier. I have a feelling that next tomato sauce season it will be much easier.
I am also going to bake the three pie pumpkins I have and then cool them a bit and run them thru the strainer to make a smoother puree for pies.
I'm still learning on the bread making tweeking the recipes as I go.
I love it but sometimes to me it does seem like it might be a bit easier to just mix by hand but a friend has one and said that untill she got more comfortable with it she felt the same way.. now she wouldn't do without it.
Hope this helps a bit..

 

[hqueen13]

We bought ours last christmas for our main christmas present to ourselves and got a steal of a deal on it from Sears. It is the 5Qt pro mixer, and was on sale for $199.00 on black friday. Sears.com had free shipping (took forever, not that it mattered) AND I combined that with the % back from ebates, and got cash back on the purchase (let me know if you're not familiar with Ebates.com and I will be HAPPY to pass along the savings! Waiting for my next check of more than $50.00 back on purchases I've made to come in the mail!).
We have not used it much, admittedly, but it works AMAZING when we do use it, and was WELL worth the investment. I have started making my own butter, and can turn a quart of cream into 1++ lb of butter in less than 1 minute with the mixer. Course, then you have to rinse the butter, but making it is super fast!! I honestly still haven't used the other attachments, but I am very happy with the machine. The only awkward thing that I have found is that you have to remove the beater in order to get the bowl out, which is annoying if you're rinsing butter, but other than that, I haven't found any issues.
Keep an eye out and you can find a deal that makes it well worth the investment. I can't wait to add attachments to it so we can grind meat and do all sorts of other fun stuff!

 

[Mickey328]

May I just add that there are two different kinds...the "pro" and the..um...non pro, I guess, LOL. We have the "regular" mixer, where the bowl fits into the base. By releasing the top part with the beater attached, the bowl can be removed from it.

 

[Hinotori]

I had a small one that I used all the time for 10 years or more. Then my hubby got me the big 600 series one about 4 years ago. I still have the smaller one out in the shed. Nothing was reallly wrong with it, it just wasn't really big enough for doing the bread dough I wanted to do in it. I'd have given it to family, but no one wanted a small one. Mom needed something bigger and we bought her a 600 as well for her birthday one year.

 

[Boogity]

Thanks everyone. I can see that I need to save my nickles and dimes 'cause I think she would really like a good heavy duty mixer. I have found some pretty good offers on craigslist in our area.