Finding the Right Blender: Mixer Savvy Includes Using the Right Tool for the Job and a Bias for Safety

One of the most useful and timesaving appliances found in the kitchen is the mixer. Whether it's used for pastry or pizza crust, meatloaf or meringue, soup stock or spaghetti sauce, the ubiquitous mixer shaves hours off what would be laborious and time-consuming kitchen work.

If there's one appliance that could bring a chef to his knees with a breakdown, it's the mixer. But choosing and using the right equipment, along with a little bit of tender-loving care and cleaning, will help keep the kitchen staff moving quickly and efficiently.

Choosing and Using the Right Mixer

Mixers come in a mind-boggling array of sizes and styles each designed to meet a variety of purposes. The most common is the family of planetary mixers, which range in size from well under 12 quarts to a whopping 140 quarts. The basic planetary mixer gets its name from the fact that the mixing arm rotates around its own axis, as well as around the bowl, just as planets rotate around their own axis as well as around their solar system.

The planetary mixer is a true workhorse, and forms the foundation of a variety of kitchen functions. First, a variety of agitators or mixing arms is available to suit a variety of needs. Perhaps the three most common are the dough hook, the paddle, and the whip. The dough hook is used to mix or knead dough. Paddles or beaters are used for a variety of jobs from beating batter to mixing meatloaf. Whips are used to aerate as well as mix when preparing products such as whipped cream, mousse or meringues.

As Richard Doucette, assistant executive chef at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, explains, having the right mixer is important, and using the wrong equipment can lead to costly repairs. "If you're mixing something heavy like pizza dough, you really should use a spiral mixer," Doucette says. Unlike the standard planetary mixer, the spiral mixer has a straight shaft to turn the agitator, and a rotating bowl allows the agitator to mix the entire contents. This design eliminates the mechanism's weak link: the planetary gears. Using a planetary mixer for pizza dough could result in a failure of the agitator shaft or the planetary gears, and the resulting downtime and repairs can be costly. If you must use a planetary mixer to mix something stiff like pizza dough, mix only half batches to reduce the stress and strain on the equipment.