[OT] What's a good kitchen hand mixer?

But those don't come handheld, I think.

Seen in one home: "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody gonna be happy!"

First words from momma before I dove into a web search: She say she don't want no Sunbeam no more :-)

It's not really all that big'n'fat (unlike, say, myself). The Artisan is just a fraction of an inch larger than the Classic and Ultra Power models that more often show up on the store shelves, so you can get a good feel for the dimensions. The slightly more powerful engine also gets one enameled vice bare metal beaters and a slightly larger bowl that has a side handle. The handle is really nice to have.

You might as well get one and knock off a year or so from your cry of regret when you exclaim that you should have gotten one years ago. ;-)

My wife makes ten or twenty pounds of English Toffee (she perfected my mother's recipe) every December. She gives it away to friends and family. I do get a little. ;-)

We use a bread machine. ;-)

Don't worry about that, the Hobarts are heavy enough that you'll have to permanently allocate counter space.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Allegedly, some of the KA stuff is assembled in the US, maybe Chinese parts kits imported and slapped together by union labor, if you want to support that sort of thing.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

awback of the process is they won't let you flame any of the complete idiot s who wrote some of them, especially as regards claims of difficulty of ass embly or operation, usually by a woman or maybe even a woeful-man. The most you can do is up/down vote them. I bought a low end Murray lawnmower for t rim work that had terrible reviews claiming all sorts of problems, I bought it anyway, and it turned out to be a great machine, very simple design, ve ry reliable and a pure pleasure to use, and I've used it a lot, enough to k now it's a keeper. Then you need to watch the American corporate scam of ca shing in on decades old reputation that /probably/ is no longer deserved. A lot of the mid-/low-range KitchenAid look no better than the $19.99 Oster or B&D, but because of the KitchenAid name, the thieves sell it for 50-100% more, when it comes out of the same factory in China, the only difference being the KitchenAid tag

gsList is not bad at all.

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As I suspected, the hand mixers are totally made in China. The official Kit chenAid answer:

As usual, Wiki has a good lowdown on them. Apparently KitchenAid is Hobart:

They are owned by Whirlpool at present.

Or I could get my wife one of these, in fire engine red, and it'll last until it literally falls out of our hands:

I used an industrial Metabo back in my wild days and it could get pizza dough for a dozen guys from zero to bubbling in minutes. Those can sink a cool kilowatt into a kneading hook.

Yeah, I know, and that's what we definitely want to avoid. Especially since the kitchen counter is open towards the living room. It shouldn't look like the mess hall of a destroyer.

My wife says I must have a better nose than our Labradors. The millisecond a catch a whiff I run over to the kitchen.

So do we. But there is dough that it simply can't handle. I can hear it from the office ... eeeaaarup ... eeeaaarup ... eeeeeeeeeeaaaaaarup ... so far no puffs of smoke. But sometimes I think it's really close to burning up and it is a fairly massive older machine. The new ones can't match it, we had one and gave it away.

Ummmm.... 0-2800 rpm. That's much to fast. What you want is torque, not RPM. The typical home dough mixer runs at 10 to 300 RPM. Industrial mixers might go up to about 1000 RPM. Some notes on RPM and mixing time:

Maybe a low speed 1/2" drill, with a two-speed gearbox.

Your Labs would get whacked for dipping into the goods. If your wife is anything like mine, she'll threaten but I'm sneakier. ;-)

We've buried a couple of them but they last a while. They're not cheap anymore, though. They were all the rage a few years ago and everyone made one. Not so much anymore.

Yeah, right. I don't know how much torque they have at lower speeds. Mine has a mechanical gear box and tons of torque. If you don't hold the pot it'll smack into a kitchen wall.

That's kinda pricey.

They make quite fancy ones these days:

AFAIK T-fal is the European Tefal and their stuff has lasted us a long time. Although I do prefer kitchen equipment that contains no electronics.

The gearbox maintains the torque. The speed control tries, but since power is delivered only during part of the 60 Hz AC cycle, it usually loses torque rapidly at lower RPM's. Let's do the math.

Torque(Newton-meters) = (Watts * 60sec/min) / (2 * Pi * RPM)

Your proposed Milwaukee 3/8" drill burns 8A or about 900 watts at 2800 RPM (ignoring power factor, copper losses, and efficiency). Therefore, the maximum torque will be: Torque = 900 * 60 / 6.28 * 2800 = 3.1 N-m or 2.3 ft-lbs

My proposed Milwaukee 1/2" drill burns 7.5A or 860 watts at 300 RPM. Torque = 860 * 60 / 6.28 * 300 = 27 N-m or 20 ft-lbs

See the difference?

With a variable speed drill, if you measure the RPM and the drill power consumption with a Kill-a-Watt meter, you can calculate the torque.

My proposed 1/2" drill can also be used to remodel the kitchen. Think of it as an investment for future use.

Yeah, I know, but it's still cheaper than a Hobart industrial mixer. Anything worth doing is also worth overdoing.

There weren't many different ones available when we were looking. We had a Cuisenart that didn't completely bake the bread so dumped it a couple of months after we bought it. So far, this one's been pretty good.

Yes, but when I accidentally left my Metabo drill in high gear it still went through tough pizza dough without any problem. Except that it would immediately try to fling the whole big pot against a kitchen wall.

But I've got three already. One from grandpa, almost 100 years old, geared down so much that it can easily damage a wrist if not careful. When the switch would get stuck on that one all you can do is ... run. I've used that one to drill out tree stumps. Then a major hammer drill. Last but not least my trusty old Metabo that has recently celebrated its

True. Another source is thrift stores and garage sales. Sometimes the good old stuff shows up there. Like our monster bread maker which cost us $3. After adjusting the mounts for the pot it never let us down and it has seen some mean dough (it's only used as a mixer). It's a gamble. On a waffle iron we were not so lucky. It was from the days of Methusaleh and upon first use spewed out sparks and flames. Probably a pre-WW-II wedding gift that sat in someone's cabinet all those years.

Pricey, pricey. I like the medieval way of baking, out there in the wind and harsh weather, in the Weber barbie. That is how we bake most of the "immediate use" bread, for dinner. During cold winter days I make sure the wood stove is almost ready for re-load an hour or so before dinner, steal coals from it, carry them outside in a fire-safe container, dump them into the Weber -> instant-on. That way it pre-heats faster than any oven.

I had the same problem. My hand drill did a tolerable job of mixing the dough, but failed miserably when I extracted the hook from bowl with the power applied. The drill rpm increased dramatically, launching the dough remaining on the hook all over me and the kitchen. Inertia is proportional to the square of the angular velocity, allowing a small increase in rpm to produce an impressive mess.

Pick one. Use it as a mixer. No need to buy something new. Maybe replace the grease with something that's food safe. If it's too heavy, attach a spring loaded cable spool to the ceiling.

I like the hammer drill idea. I have no idea what it will do to the bowl or kitchen counter, but whatever happens, it's sure to be impressive.

I prefer Milwaukee drills. For loaning to friends and neighbors, I have an assortment of disreputable looking Craftsman, Skil, and Porter Cable machines. I don't think any of them would be considered food safe.

We had a really good local thrift shop that supplied my junk collecting addiction with everything from used jeans to Tek test equipment. Part of my house are furnished in "thrift shop eclectic" furniture. However, they folded and were replaced by a thrift shop run by a religious organization. Most of the good donations are held in the back room and sold on Craigslist or Ebay. I'm told they get about double that way. What's left or doesn't sell is sold in the store.

More useful for tools is the local used tool dealer: The problem is that they know what the stuff is worth and price things accordingly. Since I know their mechanic spends more time on his surf board than in the shop, I can usually get a deal on a broken power tool, and fix it myself. The difficult part is finding the parts for really old power tools.

I plead ignorance. I don't like waffles and am unfamiliar with the stamping press used to produce waffles. When I go garage sailing, I usually carry a small ohms-guesser to check if the appliance has something between the AC outlet wires.