Kitcheaide stand mixers

[Birdhunter1]

Anybody have one?
For Christmas this year I got my wife a Kitchenaide 5 quart Artisan mixer, she has always wanted one and she has been fairly quiet in the past year with a few firearm, reloading equipment and other tool purchases. So to reward her quietness and to keep the peace as best as I can it was her turn for a larger $$ item she has been wanting, I haven't got it for her in the past because she has never been a cooking nut like she is now, so for Christmas this year she is getting all sorts of kitchen stuff that she either needs but doesn't know she needs or that she wants but wouldn't spend the money to buy them for herself.

This past week we processed 3 deer and ground alot of meat into burger with my grandpa's old hand crank meat grinder. Now this grinder is great and won't balk from anything as long as you have the shoulder power for it, but the last few years older shoulder injuries are catching up to me and after doing the burger meat off of 3 deer I was hurting a bit. Usually she will grind to, but being 8 months pregnant I didn't want her to risk overdoing and injuring herself, so it was all me. Plus I figured I was fortunate enough to have a wife that enjoys this whoel butchering thing! By the time we were done with all of it we were both saying it woudl be nice to have an electric grinder.

Back to the mixer, I see that they also make a food grinder attacthment for this mixer. I am just wondering if anyone here has used this attachment on their kitchenaide mixer and how well it will grind meats? I know this mixer is not a lightweight easily breakable item but I also know how hard it was to grind some pieces of meat if you did not cut them into smaller cubes and instead threw a whole chunk in the grinder.

 

[Birdhunter1]

Here is the grinder attachment from Kitchenaide that I mentioned:
KitchenAid Food Grinder - Model FGA at Sears.com

 

[Wayne County Hose]

My mom used to be a professional caterer and she would never be without one. I have had the same Kitchenaid for over 20 years, it even survived a house fire. The grinder attachment will grind almost anything you can fit down the pipe. You won't be disappointed. It's probably the last mixer/grinder you will ever buy.

 

[Scooby074]

Growing up , my parents ran a motel. In the kitchen there was a Kitchenaid mixer. It was used for years on a daily basis. I have no problems recommending it.

 

[Russ]

If you are grinding a few pounds of meat now and then its ok, But if you grinding a lot you will burn out mixer motor. I know a person who worked in a butcher supply shop. Several customers burned out thier mixers porcessing game. You will need a dedicated meat grinder if you do a lot.

 

[SnowRidge]

KitchenAid was sold by Hobart some years ago. I know the dishwashers and such are nothing like they used to be. I used to have a KitchenAid dishwasher with a built in blower for drying. Nobody seems to make anything like that anymore.

I don't know about the mixers. They may not have cheapened them like they did the large appliances. We have an older KitchenAid mixer that is a gem. Hopefully, they are still built the old fashioned way.

 

[Bird]

I bought the 5 qt. Artisan "refurbished" directly from KitchenAid a year and a half ago. It looked new and has worked well ever since we got it. Then just over a year ago, I bought the food grinder and it's worked great for us, BUT we've only used it occasionally for small quantities of cooked meats. For instance, left over chicken, boiled egg, onion, and pickles to make chicken salad for sandwiches.

I would think there's a good chance that Russ is right. However, we also have the ice cream maker for ours and you run the motor continuously for 20-30 minutes when making ice cream. So it might work safely for grinding your deer meat if you pause to let it rest or cool occasionally.

No guarantees.

 

[Bird]

I used to have a KitchenAid dishwasher with a built in blower for drying.

What happened to it, and how old was it when you got rid of it? When we bought this house 3 years ago, it already had a KitchenAid Superba electric range and a KitchenAid dishwasher. Both looked new, but when I checked the serial numbers and got manuals for them, they're both 1999 models. I've never seen a dishwasher that I'd give a nickel for, but my wife likes them. And I do know this is the quietest and best one I've seen so far. And since buying the house, we bought the stand mixer and a KitchenAid Counter Top Oven (toaster/broiler, in other words).

 

[jaybrad]

Anybody have one?
For Christmas this year I got my wife a Kitchenaide 5 quart Artisan mixer...<snip>... I know this mixer is not a lightweight easily breakable item but I also know how hard it was to grind some pieces of meat if you did not cut them into smaller cubes and instead threw a whole chunk in the grinder.

We have had the 6 quart model for 5-6 years now and have one of the grinder attachments. It has worked flawlessly, but I've only ground small quantities of meat for a few burgers or when making pork pot stickers.

It is a great machine, but would not be the unit I would use to grind up a lot of meat (> 5 pounds or so).

But since there are lots of clever folks on TBN, maybe they can help you adapt your manual grinder to a 3PH, PTO driven model?

Argh, argh, argh!

 

[PhilNH5]

I have had the Artisan for about 3 years now. Maybe 4. I use it to make a loaf of yeast bread and a dessert style bread each week.

I have the food grinder attachment. It came in an accessory kit that included the food mill and the shredder.

We make about 30 - 40 pts of spaghetti sauce and 30 - 40 pts of apple butter each year.

About 16 months ago - with all of the media reports of contaminated ground beef I started grinding my own. I make sweet italian sausage and breakfast sausage as well. Typically I'll by 6 or so pounds of whatever beef or pork is on sale. Back at home I cut up the meat and feed it through the food grinder. I cut the cheap steaks into strips. That way the strips self feed as the grinder sucks them in.For the pork sausages i add spices. The Artisan runs on the lowest speed when I do this.

The Artisan handles all of these chores with ease. Kneading the bread dough seems to put the most strain on the motor. More so than the meat grinder.

Phil

 

[JC-jetro]

I have one that is 350 watt variety for over 23 years. I have grounded 32 deer with it, lots of beef grinding and literally many thousand of bread loaves with. Four boys and many birthdays and every single one of them was used with my kitchen aide. I just about love it , the best money you'll spend. last time I checked the motor brushes it still had plenty of graphite. It is my # house warming and wedding present to close family and friends. I probably bought about 8 of them in last 15 years and not one of them malfunctioned ever.
I think it is in the same league as my Ford 1700

JC,

 

[CurlyDave]

They last like a mother-in-law's curse...

 

[ronjhall]

Wife has a K45 that was purchased in 1974. Still runs great. The company that I retired from owned KitchenAid at one time. It was sold off to Whirlpool in 1986. Forum with history. forum.kitchenaid.com
Seems there are a lot of complaints about the current model mixers. Consumers Affairs.
There a lot of these mixers sold. They are about the only mixer available in a heavy duty model. We would buy another one. But the one we have will still be around for the kids to inherit.

 

[Bedlam]

Mine worked fine till it broke from running to 'slow' . Problem was all that metal etc. but they have a plastic gear inside that strips out quite easily.Yep bead dough was being prepared. (darn ill have to make unhealthy cookies)lol It reminds me of the Kirby vacuum built like a tank and then there the plastic impeller that goes to heck, Thats where they make their money.Parts. and particularly the ""shear""" pin part.
Perhaps a slip clutch would have helped lol

 

[irvingj]

When I worked in HVAC, we "branched out" into restaurant supply, and sold Kitchenaid stand mixers. They used to have 2 models, the K45SS and the K5SS. Seems like the motors were 350 and 400 watts, respectively.

We had restaurants that would purchase them and use 'em up in a year or so, but that's not bad considering the abuse they had to endure.... about the only consistent problem we had was customers overloading the things and taking out the speed control (just inside the round rear cover), especially the solid state ones that were developed in the mid 80s. I suspect that problem may have been addressed by now. PhilNH5 is right-- making bread dough is about the toughest job these machines are asked to do.

Don't know who makes them now, but they used to be VERY tough little mixers; we sold a bunch of 'em, especially around this time of year....

 

[jdbower]

I'm not sure if they meet the quality of the older KitchenAids (I, too, have relatives with mixers that are multiple decades old and work like new) but I've been doing research on them and the KitchenAid still seems to be the top-end brand. More importantly, the KA "PTO" has the most number of useful attachments if you want to do anything more than grinding meat.

Interestingly, KA has also supplanted Cuisinart in the high end food processor market, the Cuisinart does dough a bit better (who does dough in a food processor?) but most of the research I've found favors the KA for everything else. Perhaps even more amusing is that a Japanese company that also makes one of the best rice cookers on the market (Zojirushi) seems to have one of the best breadmakers, many Asians have issues digesting bread because their systems are used to rice as a primary starch source and they're not used to processed wheat.

 

[Bird]

Seems there are a lot of complaints about the current model mixers. Consumers Affairs.

Ron, that doesn't sound good at all. And apparently they do have a number of mixers returned, because they seemed to have an ample supply and variety of models refurbished. The only difference I could tell from a new one is a sticker in the manual showing a 6 month warranty instead of a one year warranty, and a big red "REFURBISHED" stamped in the manual. But I paid $189 for it instead of $299, so I guess if it blows up someday I won't have lost as much as some of those folks.

 

[jdbower]

Go figure, Costco had $50 off their special model KitchenAid plus a $20 mail in rebate so I bought one. The internal view shows all metal gearing as near as I can tell, but it's not on the KitchenAid website so I don't know how it stacks up against the Pro 600 series I had been looking at (beyond the wattage, but I'd imagine even the base model has more than enough power for me). Amazon has a lottery-based special for a KitchenAid Pro Series 600 at $69 (list is $499), if I'm selected for that deal and actually get it I'll probably bring back the Costco model.

 

[mjarrels]

Another nice thing is that you can get one in your favorite tractor color!

mark

 

[reb]

I bought my wife one about 25 or 30 years ago. It quit for some reason about 6 or 8 years ago, so I bought her another--I was too busy to fix the old one. The new one broke about 3 or four years ago. It was the plastic gear someone else mentioned. I still had the old one (it has all metal gears), so I fixed it. I am not impressed with the new ones. If I had to buy another, I would look at another brand. I saw a good looking one on the web for 2 to 3 times the price before I decided to fix the old one.