It's called "Professional" for a reason
Written: Jun 05 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: power, durability, ease of use
Cons: too big! can't handle small jobs at all -- not suitable for home cooks
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| QuietI's Full Review: Humminbird Piranha Max 20 Fishfinder |
This machine is completed unsuited to my needs as a family cook and baker.
I feel so guilty saying that. Let me explain. I am a serious cook and an excellent baker. For birthdays and significant events, I bake and decorate cakes -- I even had the pleasure of making my former nanny's wedding cake a few months ago. For the amount and type of cooking I do, I definitely need a mixer.
The Professional Series was a joint wedding gift from our best man and maid of honor. I know their hearts were in the right place (and they definitely shelled out some big bucks) but... but... it's just too much!
You see, I am not a pastry chef, nor do I have a family of 5 ravenous teenagers requiring me to whip up gallons of mashed potatoes every night for dinner. What I do have are two small children who eat table food, and enjoy sweets immensely. For the amount of stuff I'm whipping these days, the cheapie hand mixer I picked up at Osco's for $10 is just fine. When they become ravenous teenagers, I probably will need a stand mixer. Just not this one.
The problem is one of quantity. You cannot properly mix small quantities of anything in this machine, because the mixer attachments don't reach all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. Besides, using this mixer on small quantities of food is like dropping a skyscraper on a fly to kill it. You don't need a gajillion horsepower to mix up a box cake mix. In fact, if you're only mixing up one cake mix (you know, two 8- or 9-inch layers), this machine is completely inadequate, as most of the mix remains unmixed in the bottom of the bowl.
You would need to put at least five pounds of potatoes into this thing to get decent mashed spuds. One pound of confectioner's sugar for decorator's icing? Forget it. For quantities like these, I resort to the cheapie.
I admit, when I did the wedding cake (three layers, six pounds of frosting), this mixer was useful. In the more than five years I've had it, that's the first time I can say that.
So, now you know where I'm coming from. From an objective standpoint, here are the features of this machine:
Quality
This machine is an industrial-grade beauty. It weighs a ton. You know it's going to outlive you, especially if you use it as infrequently as I use mine....
Power
Undeniably, more power than you could ever want or need, as a home cook. Unless you've got the aforementioned five ravenous teenagers. No quibbles here. You become grateful for it's weight here, realizing that it's heaviness is the only thing that's keeping it from vibrating itself off the counter. It never so much as budges while it's on.
Ease of Use
It takes a bit of getting used to, snapping in the attachments and popping the bowl onto its pegs, but it is not in the least bit difficult. The speed control is intuitive and well-positioned for right-handed people. (Nearly all kitchen machines that are not symmetrical are designed for right-handed people, which just means that left-handed cooks become ambidextrous in the kitchen.)
Clean up
A snap. Stainless steel bowl and whip attachment, other parts heavy-duty plastic, all dishwasher safe. The machine itself can be wiped down with a damp cloth.
Accessories
A paddle, a whip, and a dough hook are the standard trio of mixer attachments. The whip is great for whipped cream; the paddle for mashed potatoes, cakes mixes, and frosting. The dough hook really does a nice job on bread, but I don't make multiple loaves; I have witnessed it in action at my mother's.
Splatter Shield
I listed this separately, because it is sometimes difficult to get the two-part splatter shield correctly in place (see "Warranty/Customer Service" below), so take care with that. Once in place it works pretty well. You can still get a cloud of confectioner's sugar if you're making frosting though, or flour, say, if you're kneading bread, so take care to start slowly in those cases.
While the mixer is running, the splatter shield prevents you from scraping down the sides, which can be a pain.
Extendability
You can get all sorts of cool gadgets to attach to this thing, like meat grinders and sausage stuffers. They take advantage of its powerful engine. I don't have any, nor do I know anyone else who does, but they sure do look neat.
Warranty/Customer Service
Confession time. The mixer I have is actually my second KitchenAid. It comes with a warranty (or did, in December of 1994) that states, "If your mixer fails for any reason within one year, we will replace it." I actually got a replacement.
Here's the story: My husband and I were at a pot-luck Thanksgiving dinner, and I had volunteered to do the potatoes. Keep in mind, the mixer had been sitting in my cupboard for 11 months. I'm doing the potatoes and everything is going fine when all of a sudden, the spatter shield has come apart and fallen into the mixing bowl. Needless to say, in no time at all, the mixing spade was jammed and the motor burnt out (or perhaps a belt broke, I never did get a final diagnosis). End of mixer. We were sad, but not as sad as we would have been if the potatoes weren't pretty much done when it happened.
Next business day I dig out all the product info, find the warranty, and call them up. I tell them what happened, and just as the fake-nice lady is about to give me the brush off, I read her the "for any reason" line, and she caves. They sent me a new one within a week, and I just put the dead one back in the box that the new one came in, and UPS came and picked it up a few days later. So yeah, I had to push them a bit, but they did cough up a new machine. I was very impressed.
Recommendations
After listing all those features and describing their terrific customer service, I wish I could say I love this machine and recommend it to everyone I know. There's a big trend afoot now for home cooks to have "professional" cookware and equipment. For the most part, I think this is just a ploy to get consumers to spend more money on things they don't need and can't or won't use. The Professional Series is a terrific example of this, and I can't recommend it, even for people with big families.
I would recommend it to every professional chef. The demands that they make on a machine are far greater than any home cook will make. But for a family -- any size -- what I recommend is KitchenAid's stand mixer with footed bowl, the KitchenAid Classic Series K45SS. My mother has one that is 27 years old and it's still going strong. That KitchenAid routinely handles mashed potatoes for 25 people, can whip up a single cake mix or pint of whipped cream, and has been her workhorse through hundreds of wedding cakes, christening cakes, and of course, birthday cakes. Believe me, the Classic can handle anything a family cook can throw at it, and more.
The Professional Series will look great on your counter (if you want to sacrifice that much space!) but you'll find you never use it. Even on sale it runs around $300, which to my mind is much too high a price to pay for a nearly-useless "prestige" item.
I'm giving this two stars from a home cook's perspective. It's better than not having a mixer at all, but it's of limited usefulness.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): gift
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Epinions.com ID:
QuietI
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Member: Joan Hedman
Location: Chandler, AZ
Reviews written: 89
Trusted by: 70 members
About Me:
Busy. Life. You know.
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