Buy Electric Kitchen Appliances

Review by Gaylin Walli:

I've used this attachment more times than I ever thought I would. I've used it to prepare food items for my family as well as food items for crowds as large as 200 and regardless of what it is I've been making, this attachment has rolled through it without complaint. In combination with other pieces such as the sausage stuffer or the fruit attachments, you may well find that this single attachment stays on your machine the longest. I am absoultely stunned at how easy it is to put together and how simple it is to get wonderfully ground items out of it. I've had no trouble grinding any cut of meat (marbled or lean), type of meat (venison, beef, pork, chicken), or state of meat (cooked or raw). Things like chickpeas also get ground just the way I like them. The two, differently sized grinding plates give you just what you need in texture. My biggest pleasure in using this attachment is during hunting season when my husband brings home more than one deer. Venison burger meat and sausage processing never went faster. No more late nights with a hand-crank grinder!When you're done, there's nothing simpler in the cleanup. Nothing seems to stick to the plastic (plus, it's dishwasher safe!) and the metal pieces wash up quickly by hand. Even the little wooden stomper cleans well (and I've felt lost without it when I couldn't find it during sausage making). I think this attachment is the easiest to use of all of the ones I've tried.I'll never regret the purchase of this attachment.

Review by ringo:

Given all the concerns about e-coli and mad cow, we decided last year to start grinding our own beef and lamb. This grinder does the job perfectly. We grind right into the short round Ziplock boxes (about a hamburger's worth), which go into the basement freezer, and then we turn out the frozen "hockey pucks" onto a plate to defrost in the microwave, or right into the pot for bolognese sauce or sloppy joes. ("Honey, would you bring me up a couple of hockey pucks for dinner?)Assembly is easy and cleanup is easy (put a slice of bread through after the meat to make it even easier, or grind up an onion if you're making meatloaf anyway). The knife and both plates store inside the screw cap, so I don't worry about losing them (though KitchenAid sells replacements, as does goodmans-dot-net). The grinder even comes with a handy wrench-thingy to help take it apart if it tightens up.The knife and plates are not stainless (which wouldn't hold an edge), so you do have to dry them off right after washing, but I put everything, including the wooden stomper, right in the dishwasher, and after more than a year nothing has had a problem.[...] - this isn't an industrial tool! You can't set the mixer speed above three or four when grinding (less if the meat is gristly), and you've got to cut up the meat small enough to fit in the feed tube (the instructions say one-inch cubes, but long strips work too). Treat this right and it will return the favor.About the only thing that would make this more perfect is a cylindrical brush to clean out the horizontal and vertical shafts, since the dishwasher spray can't really completely reach both, and the horizontal shaft has a screw thread that tends to catch crud (Right now I'm using a folded sponge, and the abovementioned bread slice).

Review by Michael I. Gorchov:

This unit is similar to the one I have (old style 06000), so I have included my review here as well.

I bought one at Walmart last year. I use it pretty often, but mostly for making popcorn. Turn temp to 350, put a couple-three tablespoons of peanut oil in the bottom, and then when the oil heats up throw in 1/3 to 1/2 cup of popcorn. Put the cover on and keep the pot moving while the corn pops. When the corn has just about stopped popping, turn the heat off and pour the popcorn into a bowl. Butter, salt and eat. YUM!

I've deep-fried scallops in it, steamed vegetables, cooked rice, made soup and even baked potatoes. The thing works great! I wasn't going to write a review until I saw Alton Brown talk some trash about it on Good Eats. I got pretty defensive about my humble Presto cooker! He was doing a silly episode about "man food" like corn dogs and thin, square hamburgers. Well, when Mr. Brown was explaining how to fry the corn dogs he said (while holding a Presto mutlti-cooker) that a pot with an heating element on the outside of the bottom wasn't a good idea because first the element had to heat the pot and then it had to heat up the oil. Too slow. After that he displayed three home-use rectangular fryers with immersion type heating elements. He said they were also better because they each had cooking baskets and break-away magnetic cords. He picked the one with the digital controls, while implying that this was somehow better than the manual rotary temp control.

I don't know if A. B. gets paid for product placement on his show, but I really thought he was being disingenuous regarding the Presto "pot." First of all, about the heating element on the bottom of the Presto cooker: During the frying demonstration, Mr. Brown had some text placed over the screen that said that if you didn't have a special electric fryer, that a pot on the stove-top would work fine. Isn't that interesting? What the heck is a pot on the stove, but just a heating element on the outside of a pot that heats up the pot and then the oil inside? That's exactly what he was criticizing the Presto kettle about. What gives? Secondly, the Presto cooker DOES TOO have a magnetic break-away electric cord to keep the unit from tipping when the cord is yanked by accident. Also, the Presto cooker DOES TOO come with a frying-steaming basket, which Brown implied it didn't have. Nya, nya, nya! See, I can be just as immature as Alton Brown!

I don't know if the rectangular fryers are really better, but I'm sure they cost a lot more. My Presto cooker was .85 at Walmart. I keep it in a lower cabinet - it doesn't take up much space there. I pull it out when I need it. It's inexpensive, easy to use, and simple. When we go to Maine in August, I'm allowed to take only one of my counter-top appliances. So, I just take the Presto cooker with me. Normally, I cook steel cut oats in a small bowl, sitting in water, in a slow cooker (a bain marie - sort of - found the idea here [link deleted]) I can do the same thing with the Presto cooker. And I have a pot with me on vacation that I can do so much more with.

One last thing. With my slow cooker I use a plug-in timer called a Rival Smart-Part. But it's not rated to control the wattage of the Presto multi-cooker. I found a heavy-duty programmable digital timer that I use to turn the Presto cooker off and on automatically. This device really allows me to use the Presto cooker like a slow cooker, without over-cooking stews and such when I am out of the house all day. The Presto multi-cooker is a terrific appliance! Buy one now, and don't believe everything you see on TV!

Flash Update! Here is another reason to buy a Presto multi-cooker: I'm making a beef stew with red wine tonight. What a mess browning the stew beef! I have a 3 quart Wagner cast-iron chicken fryer, and this is what I used to brown the beef chuck cubes. These days the meat hasn't been aged much, and so it is very difficult to brown properly. I managed to do it in batches, but the stove-top got pretty messy by the time I was done. I put the browned meat, vegetables, and garlic into the Presto cooker ( I made sure to deglaze the chicken fryer with wine and include all the tasty bits) and continued to cook the stew. And then I could proceed to clean up the stove-top while the beef stew simmered away in a different part of the kitchen. I am very pleased not to have to clean up all that oil splatter after dinner!

Review by Foyus:

I've had mine sine either 1997 or 1998. Thereabout. Right now as I write, I'm frying some fish and the result has always been as it was when I first bought it. I'm looking for a replacement basket because someone, whom I let use my deep fryer for a party, lost my basket. That was 11 years ago. I've been frying without the basket since then and it's the same result. Now I want to get a new basket, not a new fryer. For as long it works, I will continue to use it. So expect me back in 15 years.

Review by Not my real name:

I bought this after reading a lot of reviews. My choice was based on a number of factors. I have owned a hand-crank, ice-and-salt ice cream maker in the past - it made great ice cream but was messy; I didn't want yet another appliance that I had to find where to store; and I have owned and liked my KitchenAid stand mixer for a number of years.

This is basically a double-walled, sealed mixing bowl, with the space inside the walls filled with some liquid (presumably like the refreezable ice packs). It comes with plastic paddle. The basic steps are:

1 Freeze the bowl (I keep mine in the freezer)

2 Make and cool an ice cream custard, or a fruit mix for sorbet

3 Assemble the frozen bowl and the plastic paddle on the stand mixer

4 Switch the mixer on lowest speed, add the custard

5 Let the mixer stir the mix until it freezes (to a "soft serve" consistency)

6 Transfer the ice cream to a bowl with a lid, and freeze until firm

Here are my comments:

First, take a black marker and obliterate all the nutritional information about the recipes in the instruction book. We know that ice cream is full of fat and sugar -- that's why we like it! We don't need reminding.

* Try a dry run to assemble the bowl and paddle. This is designed to fit many models of KitchenAid mixers, and it's not obvious. You don't want to be figuring this out when you are ready to make your first batch.

* Freeze the bowl for longer than the suggested 18 hours

* MAKE HALF QUANTITIES: the two-quart recipes fill the bowl, and I had a couple of overflows as the ice cream expands as it cools.

* Also, filling the bowl means that the ice cream takes longer to freeze. The first time I tried this, it didn't freeze as the bowl had not been frozen long enough to handle the two quarts.

* Get a good recipe to use up the egg whites. I make meringue from the New York Times Cook Book. I guess an omelet would be good too.

* There's mistake in the instruction book. In one place it suggests adding the fruit, nuts etc half way through the freezing process, and in another place it suggests adding these ingredients at the end of the mixing cycle.

* Use enough mix (custard or fruit puree) to at least fill half of the bowl -- this way the paddle will mix the entire batch.

* Remember that freezing enhances the sweet taste -- so do not over sweeten the mix before you freeze, otherwise the ice cream or sorbet will be too sweet.

* If you're making a fruit puree for sorbet, a blender makes a *MUCH* smoother puree than a food processor. I think this makes a difference in the texture of the final sorbet.

* After preparation, you need to cool the custard or puree in the fridge for a few hours. Use a jug that has a decent pouring lip: this will make it much easier to pour into the freezer bowl than if you just use a regular mixing bowl.

* There is very little space between the edge of the bowl and the paddle -- this can mean a mess when you fill the bowl. It **really** needs a pouring spout designed to fit

* Getting the semi-frozen desert out of the bowl can be messy - there is no handle on the bowl and it has smooth, slippery sides.

* Use a container for the final freezing that has a little air space after you fill with the semi-frozen ice cream -- this allows for additional expansion of the desert, and prevents the need to squash the final product into the bowl.

* I've used recipes from The New York Times Cookbook and Fine Cooking magazine -- all delicious, better than store bought, and slightly different than the regular recipes for vanilla, cookies and cream, etc.

* Use the freshest eggs you can find -- not the ones that have been sitting in the fridge door for a month

Update February 2008

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Thanks very much to all the kind comments that folks have left. For those of you who haven't read the comments on this review: it's worthwhile taking a few minutes to do so as some of the commenters have additional suggestions and ideas.

Update December 2009

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A couple of the recent comments have asked whether the inside of the bowl is aluminum or non-stick. It *appears* to be metallic, but with plastics these days, it's anybody's guess. It is light gray so could be aluminum, but I'd wager that it is some sort of alloy. It is definitely NOT the type of non-stick found in Teflon-type frying pans.

BTW - I've had this for nearly four years and am still loving it. Long term durability seems to be good.

Review by Michael Trotman:

I think my wife is trying to murder me with this KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment! She bought this for me for Christmas along with the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Recipe book knowing full well that I would become obsessed with trying all of the recipes. I'm on the third batch (Cherry Garcia, Coffee Chip, Chocolate Chocolate Chip) and I can already feel my heart slowing down. I can hardly make it to the mailbox without becoming winded. Luckily I realized her dastardly plot before having an ice cream overdose induced myocardial infarction. She almost got away with it as nobody would have suspected her. The paramedics would have just thought I was another fat pig who overdosed on ice cream.

This is so easy to use you may also find yourself overstocked with fresh quarts of the best ice cream you ever tasted. Follow the recipes in Ben and Jerry's book and carefully follow the directions that come with the churn and you'll make great ice cream every time. As the other reviewers have mentioned, it is essential to allow the ice cream to "ripen" before serving. This is not a requirement that is unique to this churn by the way. This is necessary with other churns as well. So be patient, plan ahead, get creative, and enjoy.

Review by S. Depenning:

I just bought this mixer after reviewing Amazon comments and other Web sites. Amazon users give the Cuisinart mixed reviews, but several other sites, such as Cooks.com give it very high marks -- equal to or better than the KitchenAid. It came down to this mixer or a KitchenAid. I decided to buy the Cuisinart, based on the 3-year warranty. One use tells me the mixer has the power I need. It feels and looks first rate, and the beaters do a great job. I agree with everything the first reviewer said in his excellent review, except I don't think the beater release is all that flimsy, unless you are trying to jam attachements in that aren't made for the unit. I'd be reluctant to use other brand dough hooks or attachments as he suggested. The ones I have from a previous mixer are not only larger on the tips (he filed those down) but are also a bit thicker on the shafts. I think you're asking for trouble if you try to force other units' attachments into this mixer. I rate it four stars because Cuisinart doesn't even make dough hooks for this model -- then again, I've never found dough hooks to be very useful on a hand mixer. Oh yeah, I got this baby at "Bad Breath and Beyond" for after I used the 20% coupon. But mine is ALL CHROME top to bottom -- it looks and feels totally awesome! I'll try to upate this review after I've used the mixer a while longer.

ONE YEAR UPDATE:

The mixer continues to perform as expected. I mainly use it for cookie dough, cake mixes, and mashed potatoes. It slugs through them exactly as I'd want. The "soft" start is really a nice feature as it keeps things from flying all over the kitchen when the beaters start up. I think I saw the price had come down at Bed Bath and Beyond, making the mixer an even better value.

Review by D. Dang:

I was in the market for a new hand held mixer after the KitchenAid that I got for Christmas a couple of years back died an ignominious death while making a simple batch of chocolate chip cookies. I have a twenty year old, Heavy Duty, 325 watt KitchenAid stand mixer that has never let me down and I expected better from their hand held mixer. I could go on, but that's another story.

I had my search narrowed down to this seven speed Cuisinart and the Dualit (made in England) hand mixers and decided to go with the Cuisinart partly because it was lower in cost and partly because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get parts or repair support for the Dualit in case it ever needed it. Cuisinart is a major supplier of kitchen electrics in the USA and service centers are nearly everywhere.

The Cuisinart boasts 7 speeds, and there is truly 7 different speeds. The first speed is quite slow, unlike the low speed of the Dualit, while the highest speed is quite brisk. All of the different speeds is achieved electronically through an electronic control circuit contained within the handle of the appliance.

Initially, I was concerned about this. Old fashioned appliances, like my KitchenAid stand mixer, achieve different speeds by analog means in which a series of resistors (actually, a variable resistive coil) is used to control the voltage to the motor and, thereby, control the motors speed. This is a very simple and effective means of controlling no load speeds. However, the downside is that as the mixture that you are mixing becomes thicker, the machine will slow down as the amount of energy going to the motor stays constant unless you turn up the speed control.

In an electronic control, the amount of energy going to the motor is changed not by changing the voltage to the motor but by changing the width of the energy pulse to the motor. As the load on the motor increases because of a thicker mixture, a feedback sensor detects the slowdown in the motor speed and adds more energy automatically to the motor in an attempt to keep the speed constant.

(At this point in my attempt to describe how this thing works, my wife's eyes have now fully glazed over and she has transitioned into a catatonic state. No worries. What this mumbo-jumbo means is that if you want medium speed and your mixture is thin whipping cream, you get medium speed. Likewise, if you want medium speed and you have a thick refrigerator cookie dough, you get medium speed.)

Another neat trick with electronic speed control is that you can control how fast the start up of the beaters are. In an old fashioned mixer, as soon as you turn on the switch, full power for that speed is delivered to the motor. In this electronic Cuisinart, the power is increased slowly until you get to the selected speed. This is the so-called "soft start" that the company advertises. And it really works, if imperfectly.

I say imperfectly because the power up actually overshoots slightly the target speed before it slows down and stabilizes. This is not a big problem because the extra speed is only for a fraction of a second and, truth be told, most users won't notice this. The fact that it starts up slowly is a real advantage for not blowing around your ingredients when you first turn it on.

The controls themselves are quite clean and elegant. There is a tall, push button on/off switch that is easily pressed and two push button membrane switches to adjust the speed up and down. All the switches are easily activated with your thumb without loss of control of the mixer. A single digit LED display tells you what speed you are in. When you turn it on, it automatically starts off in the slowest speed.

The beater release is an index finger operated trigger instead of the more typical button on the top or lever on the bottom. The beater release works extremely well. So well, in fact, that I've accidentally ejected the beaters while trying to get a stronger grip on the handle when beating a thick cookie dough. I'm a fairly big guy with meaty hands and I have no trouble getting a good grip on the mixer. For those of smaller stature, just be aware that this is a beefy mixer and is definitely larger than the GE mixer that I had handed down to me by my mom over thirty years ago.

The beater ejection trigger seems somewhat soft as it has some give on it before the beaters eject. However, I've given it a good pull with far more force than is needed to eject the beaters and don't believe that it will break without obvious abuse. The trigger itself bottoms out solidly in the opening of the mixer housing, so there is no reason to pull on it with more force once it has bottomed out.

There are other nice touches on the mixer that shows that the designer of this appliance knew what he was doing. The cord is on a swivel so that it can be positioned out of the way for right or left handed users. The back is flat so that you can easily rest it on its end with the beaters above the bowl. All exterior surfaces are rounded off so that the mixer is easy to wipe clean without any crevices for splash-off to collect and slowly harden over the years.

Even the beaters are designed so that there is no center post to complicate cleaning. The beaters work well as does the included whisk. I was actually kind of leery of the usefulness of the whisk at first because it seems so thin and flimsy compared to my hand held whisks. However, I whipped up two cups of heavy cream to stiff peaks in about two minutes. I started off at the lowest speed until the mixture thickened slightly and then gradually cranked up the speed until maximum. No muss, no fuss, and no drops of cream sprayed all over the table. The whisk looks flimsy but works well.

As far as power goes, the mixer is listed at 225 watts, the same as some low end KitchenAid stand mixers. I mixed up a batch of stone cookies, my stiffest cookie dough recipe, with the hand mixer in order to test its power. (My thinking was that it was better to break it now and return it under warranty rather than find out later that it couldn't handle the dough.) It did an admirable job of handling the double recipe. I don't think I would use the hand mixer again, though, as it was too hard to hold the bowl steady with one hand and the mixer with the other. The dough was so stiff that I had a hard time controlling the mixer as it pushed its way through the dough and cut it into small pieces. The motor slowed down from its top speed (and full power) but it never bogged down completely. I had the mixer on at full power for about a minute and didn't notice any burning smell from an overheated motor. The engineers did a good job on this one.

Now, I'm sure that if I had kept on mixing the dough for about ten minutes I would have burned out the motor from overheating it under heavy load. But I would consider this blatant abuse and to be an unrealistic expectation. Likewise, I wouldn't consider mixing bread dough with a hand mixer when a heavy duty stand mixer is the more appropriate solution. (Though I am sure that there are those out there that would use a pocket knife to try and cut down a tree.)

The only negative that I will give this mixer is that it is somewhat noisy. The cooling fan is mounted on the motor shaft in the front of the mixer housing and lets out a high pitched whine when in the higher speeds. It sounds somewhat like a jet engine or a vacuum cleaner, but certainly much quieter than either. The fan does a good job of keeping the motor cool and long lived. Covering the air opening at the front of the mixer makes it almost silent but would, undoubtedly, cause the motor to overheat and shorten its life considerably.

Overall, I give this mixer a full five stars for meeting my expectations. Only time will tell if the electronics and motor will hold up over time. But for now, this mixer works very well for what it was intended for. I'm always wary of electronic items because, generally, when they go bad the device is generally a throw-a-way as it would cost too much to fix. Such is the nature of electronics.