The ever present KitchenAid stand mixer—home icon, dwelling cook dinner must-have, topic of tattoos and even grasp’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 apart from its value. (The usual 5-quart tilt-head Artisan prices $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 value of a “customary” Artisan. Nonetheless, it is onerous to argue when KitchenAid has succeeded in making what may be probably the most enticing stand mixer of all time. And maybe its hottest—KitchenAid says it offered out of its first run inside per week.
{Photograph}: Kat Merck
Regardless, the damaging headlines popped up sooner than a batch of buttermilk biscuits. The Atlantic christened the Evergreen “the $700 kitchen instrument that’s meant to be seen, not used.” Meals & Wine mentioned the wooden bowl had divided their employees, and The Washington Put up mentioned bakers discover the walnut bowl “perplexing at greatest, a gesture at aesthetics that renders the product ineffective.”
The accompanying promotional video, that includes hikers and a couple of occasion of performative fern fondling, does little to dispel the opinion that this may be for individuals who don’t truly bake.
It was not instantly clear, although, whether or not most of the critics had truly used the mixer. As a longtime dwelling 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 occasions per week for greater than 15 years). I additionally use unlined wood bannetons recurrently for proofing bread, in addition to wood spoons and wood chopping boards each day, so the thought of a wood mixing bowl isn’t precisely farfetched to me.
For 4 weeks, I used the Evergreen as I might some other mixer, on a variety 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 opinions have insinuated, merely a kitchen cosplay prop for the well-off.
Hey Good Lookin’
It didn’t take me lengthy to seek out one drawback: In contrast to on the Artisan’s conventional stainless-steel mixing bowl, the Evergreen’s wooden bowl has no deal with. Nevertheless, in apply, this didn’t trouble me as a lot as I assumed it could, as I spotted I’m actually solely ever utilizing the deal with to wrench the bowl off its base or to regular it when an particularly tough bread dough threatens to unseat it.
Second, the bowl’s elevated upkeep wants can not 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 recurrently 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 known 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 forestall them from reaching this stage. (In reality, KitchenAid’s Evergreen FAQ explicitly says to not try “whipped egg creations” within the wooden bowl.) Would the oiled walnut bowl actually preclude Evergreen homeowners from making soufflés of their $700 mixer?
