The ever-present KitchenAid stand mixer—home icon, house cook dinner must-have, subject of tattoos and even master’s theses—has hardly ever been controversial. Content material to sleep tucked away inside cupboards ready to make cookies or birthday truffles, this century-old staple has garnered little public criticism for something aside from its worth. (The usual 5-quart tilt-head Artisan costs $350; stand mixers from different manufacturers run round $100.)
That every one modified with this 12 months’s Design Collection launch: the Evergreen. Unveiled in September, this zhuzhed-up tilt-head Artisan mannequin is an interesting matte military inexperienced with a brass attachment insert cowl, 5-quart pure walnut bowl (sustainably licensed by the European Union Timber Regulation), and three metal equipment: paddle, dough hook, and whip.
It additionally prices $700—twice the worth of a “commonplace” Artisan. Nonetheless, it is exhausting to argue when KitchenAid has succeeded in making what is likely to be probably the most engaging stand mixer of all time. And maybe its hottest—KitchenAid says it bought out of its first run inside every week.
{Photograph}: Kat Merck
Regardless, the adverse headlines popped up quicker than a batch of buttermilk biscuits. The Atlantic christened the Evergreen “the $700 kitchen tool that’s meant to be seen, not used.” Meals & Wine mentioned the wooden bowl had divided their staff, and The Washington Publish mentioned bakers discover the walnut bowl “perplexing at best, a gesture at aesthetics that renders the product useless.”
The accompanying promotional video, that includes hikers and multiple occasion of performative fern fondling, does little to dispel the opinion that this is likely to be for individuals who don’t really bake.
It was not instantly clear, although, whether or not most of the critics had really used the mixer. As a longtime house cook dinner and baker who has helped line-edit and recipe-test for a number of bread-related cookbooks, together with a James Beard award winner, I do know my approach round a KitchenAid mixer (and have used an Artisan mannequin a number of instances every week for greater than 15 years). I additionally use unlined wooden bannetons commonly for proofing bread, in addition to wood spoons and wood reducing boards each day, so the concept of a wood mixing bowl isn’t precisely farfetched to me.
For 4 weeks, I used the Evergreen as I might another mixer, on a spread of recipes—from meringues and cookies to bread and whipped cream—to see as soon as and for all if the offending bowl is definitely usable or if the Evergreen is, as different critiques have insinuated, merely a kitchen cosplay prop for the well-off.
Hey Good Lookin’
It didn’t take me lengthy to search out one drawback: Not like on the Artisan’s conventional chrome steel mixing bowl, the Evergreen’s wooden bowl has no deal with. Nonetheless, in follow, this didn’t hassle me as a lot as I believed it might, as I noticed I’m actually solely ever utilizing the deal with to wrench the bowl off its base or to regular it when an particularly troublesome bread dough threatens to unseat it.
Second, the bowl’s elevated upkeep wants can’t go unmentioned. The mixer comes with a card that claims to scrub and dry the bowl instantly after use—in different phrases, no soaking off cookie dough within the sink in a single day—and to commonly season the bowl with food-safe mineral oil, wooden polish, or walnut oil.
This raises one other drawback: Many baking recipes, like meringues and soufflés, require whipping egg whites to what’s referred to as stiff peak stage, the place a whisk dipped into the concoction and lifted leaves peaks that stand tall and don’t flop over. This energy lends wanted construction and physique to baked items, however stabilizing whipped egg whites is a notoriously finicky course of, and any sort of fats, together with oil, can stop them from reaching this stage. (In truth, KitchenAid’s Evergreen FAQ explicitly says to not try “whipped egg creations” within the wooden bowl.) Would the oiled walnut bowl actually preclude Evergreen house owners from making soufflés of their $700 mixer?
