KitchenAid Mixers

You get what you pay for.

If you read any of my reviews, you will see this maxim at least once. And I have come to believe it. When my wife and I first got married, we were the king and queen of outlet and liquidation shopping. We could not pass one of those salvage stores.

Don't get me wrong, we still hit those. But we are looking for the rare deal where you get a "best of breed" (thanks Jim Cramer) brand for a heck of a price. We went down the road of buying cheap and we got cheap stuff. It broke. It gave out. It didn't perform as promised. And usually at the most inopportune time: with company on the way.

So we've decided to get smart and quick throwing good money after bad. The last straw for me was when we bought a Sunbeam stand mixer when my wife really wanted a KitchenAid. The Sunbeam was $99 at Walmart. It looked and felt heavy, but was plastic. Still, we didn't think we could afford the $300 for a KitchenAid. So we bought it. It lasted a year or two, then gave out. Burnt up mixing a cake. So my wife bought a $9 hand set which promptly burnt out and wore her out as well. So she got another...it's possible she bought a 3rd, but I have lost count.

So I opened a Smarty Pig account (see my hub on Smarty Pig). We had saved 2 months short of our goal when Amazon ran a special on Kitchen Aid mixers. Not just a kitchen model, but the pro series. We were able to close our Smarty Pig goal early by cashing it as an Amazon Gift Card, saved around $100, and had our mixer two months early! Which means I had to buy my wife something different for her birthday. That might have been a good thing since jewelry is better than a mixer to say, "I love you."

Anyway, the mixer is a hoss. This thing would stir hardened concrete (almost). Again, I will reiterate: You get what you pay for. If we had settled for a standard kitchen model, I think we would have been happy, but we wouldn't have known what we were missing. Need potato chips? Add an attachment. Need pasta? Add an attachment. Need raw nuclear material processed? I don't think they make an attachment for that yet. But wait a little while.

The pro series we got is a beautiful black pearl color. It has a bread hook that mixes bread so i don't have to knead it by hand. It has a whisk that keeps me from standing there to get "stiff peaks" out of my eggs. Finally, the beaters made short work of 5 pounds of peanut butter with a pound of honey (my kids love sandwiches).

Save your money. Buy the best. Get a KitchenAid.